by David Burke
Now he sat down to meditate and allow his cores to refill with their respective energies. He was getting better at this and had realized that he was now able to recharge from empty to full in nine minutes rather than ten. That only applied though if he meditated and focused on recharging.
He could feel the PSI and Stamina building back up within his cores. At first he had thought that he was drawing it in from the world around him. Now he wasn’t so sure. He wondered if that was part of his preconceived notions about how things would work. The thing is that where was the power coming from if he wasn’t absorbing it from the environment. He tried to still himself enough to trace the tendrils of power to some kind of source.
Then a voice broke his concentration, “Any idea how many are left?” Tyler asked.
Jay growled under his breath. He knew the guy didn’t mean anything by asking the question and had no way to know he was interrupting but it still irked him. The thing is though that Jay was almost more bothered by how he felt like snapping at Tyler than by the interruption itself.
This was not who he was. Maybe the tension in this place was getting to him. Then a thought crossed his mind. Maybe it was because he wasn’t getting his time with his team like usual. Could he really be that attached to them? Or worse was he beating himself up for fleeing when they were having a regular biological process? Did that make him an awful person?
The questions shot through his mind rapid fire. To ignore them he focused on his Life Sense. He was gonna push it and see how far he could reach. “Just a sec, let me check. I need to concentrate,” Jay said as he closed his eyes again.
He first felt through his passive Life Sense. At first it had not really extended beyond his own body. Now he could automatically detect other life within a few feet of him if he allowed himself to. The sensory information seemed to default to a background noise if he didn’t focus even with the passive level.
Before he activated the first level he had the passing thought to wonder if he could send the sense inside himself and detect things about his body or if it could only go outward. Something to consider later. Then he activated it and the range now shot out for about 300 feet in every direction.
The deluge of information was great and his mind did the best to prioritize it. He was accustomed to looking for life forms that were large enough to be a threat. By this time he could pick out an owlbear or a lizat just by the feedback in his Life Sense. Something was different this time though. He had gotten accustomed to only reaching out from ground level to about 20 feet above ground.
This time though, either because of his guilty feelings or just because he was trying to test out the extent this skill had grown to he had sent it out in every direction. Or at least he was trying to. If he focused he could feel bugs and worm-like creatures in the ground. For some reason he couldn’t detect plant life with his skill as it only worked on sentient life so far.
The odd thing though was that while he could detect some of those rabbit-like creatures he had encountered the first day as far out as nearly 300 feet to his left, he couldn’t seem to reach more than about twenty feet into the ground. He narrowed his focus and tried only to reach down. Thankfully the other guys must have seen the furrowing of his brows as he concentrated because they didn’t say anything.
Even focused he couldn’t pass that barrier at 20 feet down. It was a strangely uniform barrier and was completely dead as though there was no life at all. It felt different even from the plants that he couldn’t truly sense but which he had learned to identify by how life forms would be all over them.
Not wanting to be stymied he boosted the power to level two and pushed harder down. Still nothing. It was frustrating to say the least but then he decided that instead of allowing this to be a failure he was going to explore more. He realized earlier and now again that he had some preconceived notions and maybe it was time to explore those. He pushed harder trying to map the borders of whatever it was that was blocking him.
It stretched out past his range which at level two was at least 900 feet in each direction. Letting a mix of curiosity and frustration fuel him he pushed right past level three and activated level four of Life Sense. His range was now a good mile in all directions. He detected one massive life form that was moving in their direction.
That would be the boss tri-ape headed for them. So that meant that they had finished off all the creatures. He didn’t have the quest so hadn’t been able to check and while the guys told him that they had hit 99% on it he had the mindset of trust but verify. Still it was far enough away, and he did not want to be denied this.
He pushed down and felt the barrier, but was not able to reach past it. It was like his Life Sense was completely absorbed into the barrier or there was literally nothing beyond it. He thought at this level he should be able to detect even large clusters of bacteria. What environment could exist that didn’t even have germs?
Jay was puzzled and wanted to explore this more but didn’t completely lose sight of what was going on around him. “Tyler and Miguel, get ready, the boss monster I told you about is incoming. He will be here in less than a minute.”
“Shit, aren’t you gonna help?” Miguel asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Just a minute. You two ought to be able to occupy it for a minute. Just don’t let it hit you,” Jay responded, perhaps a little smugly. Now they would realize just how thankful they should be for him being there with them.
Besides it afforded him a minute more to scan downwards. He wished that he had another skill for sense but all he had was Life Sense and he didn’t want to share about the barrier just yet with anyone outside of Team Jay. He had the feeling that it was significant and it kept ticking a memory in the back of his mind that he couldn’t quite grasp. It had something to do with the last fight against the boss ape, but he wasn’t able to recall it.
He opened his eyes a minute or so later and saw Tyler scrambling to avoid those massive fists that he had experienced before. Now he summoned his sword calmly and deliberately while watching to see what these two could do. As he did, he realized that but for Miguel, Tyler would already be a splattered mess on the jungle floor.
The winged man was flying just out of reach and strafing the ape with projectiles that he controlled with his aerokinesis. They didn’t pack a punch like Jay’s accelerated rocks but were enough to distract the beast. So, Jay sat back and watched. They were keeping ahead of it if only by a little bit.
“Aren’t you gonna help?” Tyler screamed.
“If you need it, but you will never grow fast enough if you don’t face some real peril.”
“Screw you, I don’t wanna get squished.”
“Fine when I say get out of the way, make sure you aren’t in my line of fire.”
While sitting there watching them a random thought had come to him. The more he considered it the more he thought it would work, even if it was based on one of his favorite animes. So he held the sword out away from his body, then modified it so that the handle was more like a sheath which would pull away from the blade while making sure that both ends were balanced in weight.
All of this took time, but Jay could tell by the frustrated whining from Tyler that they were still alive. First, he maximized his strength and then he took the sword and flung it so that it started to spin end over end in the air towards the tri-ape. He yelled, “Look out.”
Even as the words left his mouth, he immediately maximized his Accelerate ability on the blade. What was different about this was that it required him to split his focus and increase the speed in two different planes. First, he had to increase the spin rate and then secondly he had to increase the speed it was traveling forward at.
Further, he instinctively knew that he had to balance those two things. They couldn’t be separate processes but one simultaneous action of accelerating his throw. It was another way that he strained himself and he felt the splitting headache as the PSI drained out of him faster than ever before.
St
ill by the time the blade hit the ape’s chest it was spinning as fast as a buzz saw. It was caught completely off guard and the blade spun into its chest and was soon buried in the massive body. A thin red line blossomed on its chest as the only side of the blade’s penetration but the reaction was almost instantaneous as the creature fell to the ground coughing up great gouts of blood.
Jay was a bit disappointed that the spinning blade had not cut all the way through and exited the creature’s back. As it was, it must have cut through lungs and from the way its legs were not working damaged the spine. All in all not bad.
Although it looked sorta pathetic dragging itself forward by its massive arms. Apparently even the mortal wound was not enough to stop it from seeking to wreak its vengeance on him. “Do you two think you can finish it off now?”
They both nodded in the affirmative so Jay focused on trying to restore his depleted PSI. He heard a few grunts and a final death rattle before Tyler said, “It’s done.”
Jay opened his eyes. “So, I’m feeling like maybe we should go out of the dungeon. It’s what about dinner time now?”
“Are you crazy? We just cleared the dungeon. It’s safe for us to sleep in here. I heard stories about how you did that with your other team,” Tyler said.
Jay laughed, “Well there are three things wrong with that idea. First, it was the skills of one of my teammates that made a comfortable place for us to sleep. I guess we could probably rough it on the ground but still not the same. Second, there is no other team. I only have one team. I mean I am happy to help you guys out but no one can replace Amelia, Huong, and Meikiyo.”
“And?” Miguel asked.
“What?” Jay asked as if he had been lost in thought.
“You said there were three things.”
“Oh yeah, sorry. Was just thinking about what a lousy teammate I am to leave them just cause of a little thing like a period. Anyway, the third thing is that, there is no way a night in the jungle with you two would be anywhere near as fun as it was with them.”
At that both Miguel and Tyler grinned and nodded. Tyler added though, “Do what you need to do. I’m not gonna put my nose in that hornet’s nest.”
“You don’t feel any connection to your friends out there?”
“Flings are not the same thing as girlfriends. Miguel is my bro. You could be too if you weren’t always so worried and uptight.”
“Not even Anne?” Jay asked, referring to the girl who he had observed with Tyler the most.
“I guess she is more than a fling, but a girlfriend and a friend are not the same thing. You know bros before hoes.”
Jay wanted to be angry about that statement. He still was confused about his connection with his team but he knew that he would deck anyone that called them hoes. Try as he might though he couldn’t really muster up the energy to get upset with Tyler. Part of it was that he had heard this attitude going all the way back to high school. There was this faulty assumption that to be the alpha you had to look at girls as less than and assert yourself on them all the time. The other part of it was he just didn’t care enough about these guys, especially Tyler, to get that worked up.
“Then I will see you tomorrow. Remember that after the reset tomorrow the dungeon will be full again. If you train really hard tonight, you might be able to make it across the threshold.”
“That would require going from level four to level six though. I thought you could only go one level at a time,” Miguel said.
“I can tell you for a fact it is possible to double awaken but whatever creates the messages says it's not a good thing to do too often.”
“Okay, well then see you tomorrow. Good luck… Oh and thanks,” Tyler said.
Jay just shrugged. Why was it when he was ready to write the guy off, he had the courtesy to say thanks and Jay thought maybe there was a glimmer of a decent human being and not just a frat boy in there?
Without another word, Jay turned and started running back to the exit. It wasn’t that he was really in a hurry but rather that he needed to maximize his training. He had allowed himself to get distracted. No more. He needed to descend. He needed to get to the next floor and both he and the rest of Team Jay needed to cross the next threshold although only he was close.
Interlude 1- Accelerated Timetable
D’varn Nitor was rushing around this lab, or at least as much as A’snkarnt rushed. His hover pod which served as his mode of transportation, bed, and life support system all wrapped up into one flitted from terminal to terminal checking readings. His assistants were good at their jobs or he would not have picked them but that didn’t mean that he didn’t want to personally oversee every aspect.
This experiment after all was his brainchild. He was the one who had seen potential in the hoomans even after all the other A’snkarnt scientists had determined that they were too limited. He was the one who had petitioned the Supreme Council to allow him to move to live trials.
The testing and experimenting had been going on for millions of cycles, since before D’varn had been born. It was far from the center of their A’snkarnt power and considered a fringe system. Considering that when the testing first began hoomans were little more than apes, he felt that the progress was impressive.
Some of the other three current test species were far more advanced. All of them had physical capabilities which would make them a match for many hoomans. That was not to mention that each of them had at least progressed as far as to be able to colonize nearby planets and were unified as a species.
Hoomans were the anti-thesis of unity. Their world was divided into various nations which were constantly in states of conflict with each other. Even within their own countries they fought with each other. This was but one of the reasons that some voices on the Supreme Council had been in favor of moving the leviathan that was currently in orbit around the hoomans’ home world, regardless of the consequences to the hoomans and other species on their planet.
Still, D’varn had become the foremost expert on hoomans and his proposal had met with enough support to move to its current live testing stage. He had argued that it was their very chaotic nature which made them worthy of study. The A’snkarnt and certainly their enemy, the Forlorn, were examples of ordered existence. D’varn argued that if a means of winning the war existed, then it would come from outside of their normal channels.
Now though the chaos had progressed even faster than he had expected. Worse, his time may be shorter than originally allotted. The unthinkable had happened. Core-frame had delivered the news that the leviathan where the Elefantis were being tested had been somehow discovered by the enemy. It had been overrun despite all of its weapons and technology and while the self-destruct protocol was believed to have stopped the enemy from recovering any further technology there now remained the risk that other leviathans might be discovered.
D’varn had lost colleagues, dare he think the antiquated word, friends, in that attack. He couldn’t spare time to focus on that though. It was true that the hooman chaos had gone beyond even the bounds of all the core-generated models which they were working from.
The hooman penchant for stupidity had reduced his initial 100,000 test subjects down to less than 25,000 in a dozen cycles. They reacted to situations without thinking, rushed into danger, or simply refused to do the work necessary to survive. His detractors blamed this on the inherent instability of the race.
When he looked at the behavior of some of the hoomans in killing off their own species in the midst of life-threatening danger, it was hard to deny. Killing breeding females should be against the evolutionary mandate in any primitive species. Yet more than one cluster had seen that very act played out again and again.
The behavior became so extreme that D’varn had spent almost an entire cycle trying to find signs of tampering with the experimental protocols. He found some. It didn’t do him any good though. Whoever had tried to sabotage the test had done too thorough of a job of integrating their changes into th
e protocols. That or they were so highly placed that they could change things without even informing him. Both possibilities were frightening in their own way.
It wasn’t all bad news though. A little fewer than 200 of the test subjects had passed the first threshold and more were on the cusp. One test subject was even on the verge of crossing the second threshold. That one had been at the center of more anomalies than any other but his progress was what D’varn had dreamed of when arguing for the potential that hoomans possessed.
What the species lacked in physical or mental prowess they made up for in the ability to evolve. What they lacked in technology they made up for in adaptability. Now though due to the threat of discovery by the Forlorn he would have to move up his time table and push that adaptability to its limits. Hopefully they would be able to keep up with a 20% increase after the next reset.