The first thing to poke through the mountain of water is a rather impressive number of teeth. What follows next is a complex collection of feelers, scaled tentacles, and hanging teeth-filled jaw sections, like a mutated bobbit worm crossed with a lamprey eel’s mouth. Congratulations to that one transformation that Rhea practiced a few days back: you are no longer the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.
The worm rises further, dark and oily substances dripping from many of its twitching and folding barbed jaws. Its head is three hundred meters wide and the supporting body - segmented and with small legs making squirming rows on both sides - is growing wider, even though a full kilometre is already sticking up out of the ocean.
I notice that I’m clenching my sword’s handle with a death grip. Also, I would like to apologise to all the spiders I have been afraid of before. I now recognize that all spiders are beautiful and that arachnid lives matter.
But seriously, I feel the sudden need to kill that thing with sufficient quantities of fire to turn the seabed into glass. So, I will.
A bright, shining light distracts me from my horrified staring and I sense Rhea touch down next to me. I briefly wonder where Lola has gone, but an ice crystal blooming on the roaring worm monster’s side tells me that Lola is doing some high-power kicking practice.
“Why are we here again? Just for more energy?” asks Rhea while breathing hard.
“Well… I want to run some more experiments with partially crystallized brains. Danarius isn’t doing anything interesting, and the other crystal heads are still boycotting Database while staying on the moon. That, and I thought it might be good practice for you to coordinate a large-scale battle. And yes, we need more energy. You, Lola, and me stepping into our foundation is literally sucking Tree dry. Why did you think I kept all of us outside Tree?” I have to do some mental searching before remembering why I wanted to come here again.
“Good. There’s more on the way. Those guys are somehow similar to the ones we fought on the other continent.” Rhea points towards the west, where more large shapes are moving under the water.
“Those guys are early. Good thing you raised the jib. I think that they did indeed swim across the sea.” I give her a peck on the cheek and am about to run off.
“Wait! Why are you doing all this? I don’t understand.” A faint voice comes from where the uppity mage is still cowering on the tower’s roof. My version of killing intent seems to have left him partly paralyzed.
“Well, this planet is too much of a dump for me to want to spend an eternity here. It’s just that I might have tripped some alarms in my haste. Nothing serious, believe me.” I swing my sword low and keep it behind me.
“Nothing serious? Millenia of tradition, priceless artefacts and knowledge gone, and it’s nothing much?” the man asks in a despairing kind of outrage.
“Right, a millennia and all you managed to make was a self-cannibalizing system that preys on the talented and powerless? I’d happily topple a thousand dynasties this foul and exploitative if it means a small chance for the good people to advance.” Knowing that there can be no discussion until one of us is willing to change, I walk to the edge.
“Hey, you’re the guy that Valerius was following.” Rhea starts talking with the guy for some reason.
“Val? Is he still alive? Who are you?”
“Yeah. Best farmer I’ve ever seen. I spend a few decades in the beastkin lands and even those horned long ears don’t have his affinity for plant and soil. And I was the Smiling Immortal a while ago.” Rhea actually sounds proud…
“A farmer? What?”
I don’t hear the rest of their conversation as I jump off the tower, using the air to pull myself forward, instead of kicking off the rather weak structure. I think I will use this opportunity to train my heartcore some more. I need to work on letting my braincore come up with the plans without having to spend subjective years in combat mode. A person can change when faced with years of solitude, not something I’m keen on doing anymore now that I’ve actually got people around me.
I glide through the air in a gentle arc and kick off against the red sea at the end of my graceful fall. I see Selis hurrying over, an excited expression on her face.
I spin and look backwards. Selis has nearly stumbled as the shockwave of steam, water, and air I left behind knocks into her. She then explodes into blue light and forces the sea back down. I think she will grasp a concept of change when stepping into her own foundation. I wave at her when she looks at me, and she nods at me in return.
My rotational momentum turns me forwards again, just in time for me to see a gaping maw, filled with tentacles and wiggling teeth, opening up in front of me. The abyss is hundreds of meters wide and I see blue crystals poking from the undulating mass here and there. White, frozen flesh around the impact sites tells me that Lola is still actively cooling the shards.
I have just enough time to hear Lola squeal at me when the mouth closes around me.
Okay, I know that I want to train my heartcore, but shouldn’t I have made at least some sort of plan? From the look of things, this big boy is just the first wave.
Ah well. Let’s try cutting loose for once instead of painstakingly planning every minuscule detail.
⁂
“I’m a dragon, though. Look, I can transform.” Re-Haan holds out a glowing hand.
Still sitting on the roof, Fredon stares at the fine scales that cover the pretty women’s hand. “Any light mage specializing in light instead of healing can do illusions.”
“She’s really a dragon, though,” says the blue haired girl that just landed on the tower’s roof. “Re, what’s that breath beam thing. That was super awesome, but it makes too many waves. I wonder what it would do on land?”
“All dragons have a natural breath weapon. I upgraded it a bit. I concentrated structural qi along my dragon form’s lungs and breath-attack organ. It transformed a devastating wind attack into a beam that can vaporize stone, as you saw.”
“Super cool! Miss Re, that was really super cool!” Selis fangirls hard while Re-Haan has her chest and nose sticking up into the air.
“Madness. These people are insane,” Fredon whispers to himself. Then, the massive worm thing sticking up from the ocean, one he just managed to forget, explodes in a massive fireball, and hell truly breaks loose.
chapter thirty-seven
Prelude
Re-Haan is preparing mentally and physically. Mentally because she is about to test her foundation in an active manner for the first time, and physically because that breath attack took a lot more qi than she expected. Taking another deep breath, she motions to Selis, who immediately gives the loudly snivelling mage another punch.
“Shut it you whining poop-robe,” whispers the dragon-in-human-form, “Just be silent and watch. I think this is going to be a sight worth remembering.
Re-Haan retracts her senses, focusing on her mindscape. Her tree has continued to grow over the past few days. Unwilling to simply copy Tree’s appearance, she has guided it to grow in an ephemeral direction, willing the bark to become a translucent white, rather than the natural brown it was becoming.
This has resulted in a fine web of white lines running through her mind, a visual representation of connection and meaning. The steady influx of recruited students has given the top of her tree a lot more volume. She has even found small budding leaves that represent outside subordinates, namely the common people working in Capital’s food distribution system.
Taking in the entire tree, Re-Haan is immediately faced with a problem. The representation of her organisation is a great way to check how her projects are doing, but she fails to see how she can transform this overview into a combat-effective force.
She has her qi spread out around herself in a couple kilometre wide radius since turning back into a human and thus has a perfect image of the outside world in her mind. She observed Drew being swallowed by the enormous worm and the monster’s subsequent fiery demise. She is keeping ta
bs on the many, many new threats that are approaching her current location. She just has to figure out how to overlay her management system with the real world.
She sits there, meditating for minutes on end, while Selis and the whining mage observe how Teach and Lola hold off the new wave of truly large threats. The large enforcer-type mutants on land were big, but they didn’t exceed ten meters, the tallest reaching just fifteen feet when standing upright. Gravity does not impose these limitations on sea-based creatures, it seems.
Peeking through half-shut eyelids, she sees Drew chop a thirty-meter long seal in two, flames producing billowing clouds of steam when doused by the sea. She sees him throw the bunny towards something with too many legs, swiftly turning it into a fragmenting icicle.
Chiding herself for losing focus, Re-Haan closes her eyes again. She then thinks back on her own thought process and suddenly feels the need to slap herself. She solved the problem just now without realizing it. Why not overlay reality over her tree? Or, to be more precise, project reality above her tree and then extend the branches and fruits upwards where they are needed?
So that’s what she does. Above the white web of branch, trunk, and root, she constructs all she senses with her spiritual sense. A miniature Mana Dungeon, sea, and monster horde appear in her mind. She is already extending her branches towards certain locations when she stops. Manually choosing where her forces are best used will take up a lot of her mental prowess, why not let her subordinates do that work?
Linking Database between tree and miniature is easily done. Giving all the students access to the detailed data relevant to their areas of expertise is also done quickly. Re-Haan stands up and pulls the folding chair from her ring. Drew and Lola are still holding off the incoming wave of large beasts and will probably hold out for a while. Selis takes a chair from her own ring and sits next to her.
“Aren’t you on wave duty?” asks Re-Haan as she observes another massive animal falling into the ocean, half charred and half frozen.
“Those little splashes won’t do much,” replies Selis while sipping on a fancy drink.
The mage looks at the relaxing duo and the hulking monsters approaching their location. He puts a hand to his face, takes a few deep breaths and walks to the roof’s edge.
“No need to jump, you know. Even someone as sad as you could become that powerful one day. Although, maybe not. Your aura feels pretty fucked up.” Selis’s comment causes him to pause and turn around.
“I’m not jumping. I have a duty,” he replies while climbing down to the balcony.
“Yeah, that’s how that guy feels. He’d do anything if I could convince him that it’s for the greater good or some form of responsibility,” mumbles Selis to herself. Shrugging off the uncomfortable feeling running up her spine from that line of thought, Selis leans back into her chair and resumes watching Teach decimate town-sized monsters.
Re-Haan spares a moment from her preparations to frown at the mage who is climbing down, her experiment in short-term recruitment through dangling enticing mysteries in front of him a failure.
⁂
“No, haven’t you seen the projections? Changing the power couplers to our models won’t give us more firepower for at least twenty hours. Having one cannon out of commission won’t be compensated by the more efficient models.” A beastkin with shiny, smooth skin and slit nostrils is looking over a large hall filled with many students. Long lines of artisans work on large, tubular metal objects.
“You know what? I’m not even going to argue that point. I will argue your short-sighted and near-imbecilic placement proposal, though. We will need to build our own support. Have you seen the structural integrity ratings of that mana-made stone? Our fastening bolts will rip out of that weak stuff the moment you fire the guns at half-power!” An equally bedraggled and tired-looking beastkin stands next to him while they argue.
“The target specs don’t require more than quarter-power. The list of targets is highly susceptible to frost damage.”
“When is the last time you checked it? More importantly, when is the last time you slept?”
The smooth skin snorts. “Braincores don’t need sleep. I’m fine.”
“So, you failed to notice the spec-change alert. Right, you need to go and sleep now.”
“Spec change? What? Oh… Well, this changes nothing anyway.”
Incensed, the furry beastkin turns to his colleague. “The threats just changed from ‘large animals’ to ‘city destroying abominations’ and it doesn’t change anything? Our cannons won’t even get halfway through such massive creatures.”
“Look, we have this rivalry thing going on, right? I hate you, you hate me, and all that. But you have some ideas sometimes, and I’m wrong an extremely small percentage of the time. I might have taken that beam-focussing formation that you came up with and made it work.”
“You stole my idea? What? And you’re creepy when you’re tired. Stop pretending that we don't despise each other, you degenerate cousin-fucker.”
“One time! One flight-cursed time! And I must really be tired to try opening up to the single beastkin who managed to fall out of grace with both the previous Tooth and the current. And the focusing ring didn't work until I changed literally everything you designed, so it’s entirely my own handiwork.”
They both stare at each other, any trace of the previous levity and peace gone.
“And I might have shagged a distant cousin while drunk, but I never killed a family mem-” The bags under the beastkin’s eyes wobble as a fur-covered fist rams into his face. Spitting blood and mucus to the floor, he jumps back to his feet. “I told you it was a dumb idea to switch to a full-braincore. I barely felt that punch, kin-slayer.”
Taken aback at the vitriol in the vicious insult, the hairy student hesitates for a few moments. “Go and fuck a frog.”
Stumbling back like he was struck in the heart, the admittedly frog-like beastkin gapes at his colleague. “Cow-killer.”
Silence has since fallen on the factory floor. All the beastkin look actually sick as the two exchange insults worse than cursing someone’s mother. Snarling and squawking, the two start fighting like mad dogs.
“Go outside! I’ve had enough of you spoiled children. Come back when you’ve both caught up on your sleep.” A girl with flawless pale skin and raven black hair separates the two, throwing them both through open windows on opposite sides of the hall. Dusting her hands, she addresses the gaping audience. “Continue working! We’ll be needing those soon.”
“Tess, why did you leave? The cultivation matrix still has empty spots.” Ket walks in, his head surrounded by thin metal wires, the web of shiny cables changing constantly.
“And you’re changing your system again when this is over. That external calculator core is just not working. You’re worse than before, Ket. Stop making every decision based on math; and you look totally ridiculous.”
The web of metal filaments around Ket’s head warps into impossible figures and endless fractals for a moment, making Tess’s eyes hurt. “Does not compute. Filling the cultivation matrix has the most impact at the moment.”
The two walk away as the cultivators in the hall return to feverishly making the large beam cannons again. Tess sighs as they walk outside, missing the amused smirk that Ket shoots her. “The way it looks, you have shiny metal wires moving around your head. I feel like my face will get scratched every time we kiss. Can you imagine me with a scar on my face? That would be totally terrible!”
“Okay, but only if you cultivate with me.”
“You like totally got a deal.” Tess’s genuine shining smile makes Ket feel kind of awkward for half tricking her into recultivating too. Ket is moderately happy with the performance and sensation his own new base has. He had decided to try something wild after studying a lot of the new ways to cultivate, letting him draw some interesting conclusions.
The major rule of this new way of free-form cultivation seems to be “balance.” The s
poon-core kid’s spoon is the strongest object for the amount of qi inside it ever measured, but the rest of the kid's physical abilities are lacklustre in contrast, somewhere in between a brain and a gutcore.
The bloodcore kid has extreme regeneration and could probably keep going after being chopped into bits, but his explosive power is lacking. Ferah’s ring-shaped web of channels Teach called meridians are great for going, even after a heartcore has dropped in exhaustion, but all her other aspects, both physical and magical, are lacking.
Some outliers also exist. Ket muses as he glances at Tess fussing with her hair. Her skincore is nearly impossible to penetrate, but it seems to encourage the cultivator's vainer side. Ket is not sure how that one works, but he has some processes thinking up new angles.
Then there is the soul cultivator. He nearly died for reasons unknown. He started bleeding from everywhere on his body until he was evacuated to the moon. Another person - a rather dumb human from the savage tribes - thought to cheat the system by creating a qi making core. He turned bone-thin in hours, his flesh and fat disappearing at a visible pace as his qi levels rose at an alarming rate. An entire building is now dedicated to helping people get rid of their screwy cultivation bases without killing them.
More esoteric concepts just didn't do anything special. One person recruited by Rityn and Bassik wanted to escape no matter what. She tried to cultivate with the sole purpose of going through portals. She got qi poisoning and nearly died.
All this testing lets Ket conclude that qi is an overeager energy. A person who doesn’t know what cultivation is will suffer from a form of mystical cancer. The hyper-charged processes in his body starts running amok, the uncoordinated boosting of biological processes tearing the person apart from the inside-out. The knowledge that the energy can be controlled and a vague idea of what to do with it seems to be enough to prevent the worst-case scenario from happening.
Talking to, and studying, all the new ways to cultivate that students have been performing has led Ket to a theory. Ket has measured the performance of a wide range of people, allowing him to average the physical, mental, and any other performance-related discovery, and it has been enlightening to say the least.
The Dao of Magic: Book 3: A Western Cultivation Series Page 32