by Dakota Krout
It meant that he would be sacrificing his cultivation base. He was on the cusp of the C-ranks, and doing this now… it would lower his ranking again. Dale wanted to be furious about this, but he saw the vast improvement his aura had given him already. Enhancing his body was sure to lend to even greater strength. Creating his external aura had also stunted his advancement because it was essentially devoting a chunk of his Essence to surround him at all times… but it was almost an ‘invisible’ cost. He had simply been devoting power as he got it and hadn’t needed to lose his cultivation ranking to make it happen. Now… now it would be a very visible cost.
Dale grit his teeth and began the process. This was not something he could undo, which was the only reason he had been hesitating. Essence boiled out of his Core; Chi threads connected to each cell in his body. Those threads connected each of those cells to their surrounding cells, and slowly, the infusion of power began to enhance his body. Dale felt it like a blow when his cultivation dropped to D-eight, especially since only his heart had been fully improved by this point. Then he felt the benefit of his actions. His heart, which had been racing and straining to pump blood and repair his body, calmed and managed the same task for a fraction of the energy.
He smiled a real - if bloody - smile for the first time that day and allowed his outpouring Essence more leeway. More than anything else, he wanted to enhance and protect his brain, but he needed to do this in order. If he wanted to get at his brain, he needed to connect everything in a line from his center and upward. The connections reached the base of his skull, and he frowned. D-seven. He continued upward, and slowly, carefully, he enhanced everything until he finally reached grey matter. As the first connection took hold, his cultivation base lurched, and Dale passed out entirely.
Someone shook him. “Dale. Wake up. The process has completed, it seems.” Craig was smiling at Dale, who looked up at him with bleary eyes.
“What… happened?” Dale managed, then his newly-enhanced brain kicked in, and his eyes dilated. “I see. The brain is an amazing organ, and it is so heavily interconnected that by inducing a single change to the system… the entire organ needed to be enhanced at once. It likely drew upon my Essence until it had finished, at which point consciousness once more became possible.”
Dale blinked, felt at his cultivation, and paled. “Rank D-one…? I… I’m even lower than I started at…”
“You are likely the most potent and powerful D-ranked person on the planet.” Craig shook his head in… admiration? “Dale, you have a full external aura and one-third of your interior enhanced, including the portion that is the most difficult and Essence-intensive. The only reason you are not ranked as C-two is the lack of available Essence in your Center. With your cultivation technique and access to the lower floors of the dungeon, you could finish your full aura and still enter the C-ranks in… I can’t even estimate. Days? Weeks?”
“That’s…” Dale shook his head, which felt clear and aware. “My thoughts are so much… crisper.”
“Your brain has been enhanced past what is possible for non-cultivators. You are likely going to find that things that were difficult to understand before now are… undemanding.” Craig smiled as he saw that the Dale he knew was back in control. “How do you feel, by the way?”
“I would have to say… embarrassed?” Dale admitted shamefacedly. “Did I really attack you? It feels like a dream or like the memories are from a memory stone.”
Craig nodded sagely. “You were out of balance. Your spirit was full of power, and your body was strained to the breaking point attempting to keep up. This caused your mind to begin fracturing, and you looked to increase your fighting spirit above all else. While it is not common these days, it used to be. Back before we knew what these issues were caused by, people would begin to lose themselves to the draw of ever-increasing power, doing anything for even a small gain. It was an addiction. Now… well, like I said, it is at least less common.”
“Thank you for making me understand.” Dale stood up slowly, his body still in severe pain. “Why did you come back? I was certain you were going to just leave me here until I had finished my aura.”
“Well, I did tell you that I would see you for our next scheduled training session, yes?” Craig smirked at Dale’s expression.
“I’ve been lying on the floor there for two days?”
Chapter Thirty-four
I’m flying again. This gives me a strange sense of freedom, even though I know that I am currently anything but free. Maybe I should roll the mountain like a barrel, just to see how many people fall off? …but then I would lose all my lake water. Not worth it. Besides, the people I really want gone aren’t going anywhere except to war, it seems.
Barry had come into my dungeon again and made the usual caustic threats. What was the main difference between now and the last time he had done so? Easy! I knew for sure that he was crazy enough to follow through with the threats he was spouting. I was honestly surprised that Xenocide had never abducted this guy and used him as a cultivation resource. There was probably a whole mess of madness wrapped up in Barry’s nasty little mind. Once I had started moving, he wore a satisfied smirk and left the dungeon. He ordered me to a new position, simplistically telling me to ‘head West until ordered otherwise’. This overpowered cultivator obviously thinks of me having intelligence similar to an animal: only able to understand the carrot and stick mentality.
My main issue is that it is all stick. There has been no benefit to me for working with this fiend beyond… staying alive. That still falls under the ‘stick’ category, though! It’s a threat, a promise of slavery and a life of following the orders of the Guild. He thinks I’m a broken stallion, a creature of the wild that has learned to wear a harness. Soon enough, he’ll learn that I’m a mimic. A creature that can hide its true self until striking at an opportune moment, slaying the unaware. I was looking forward to that moment.
“Copper for your thoughts?” Dani nudged my mind, breaking me out of the fantasy I was living in.
“You’re sure nothing is going on? You were… cackling.” Dani chuckled as I sputtered and tried to find an excuse for what I wished was a more abnormal activity. “You’ve been sounding very menacing the last few days. If you remember, right now we are supposed to be spending time together, watching the changing horizon as we fly along!”
“Here we go.” Dani brightly laughed. “New superweapon? Awesome Mob? Hmm… a path to the A-ranks?”
“Oh, Cal.” Dani flew up and started following lazy patterns around the Silverwood tree. “If anyone else were to say that, I would ignore them as I would any insane person. The Guild isn’t just standard fighters and cultivators, you know. It includes all sorts of subsets like the Mages’ Guild, an Assassin Guild, and even a branch of the Church. To most people, saying you are going to fight the Guild is the same as saying that you are going to fight civilization as a whole.”
“Better. So what comes next, Cal? We are being used as a flying fortress, a mobile troop transport. How do we get out of this mess?”
run away.> I stopped her before she could ask the obvious question.
“How would we get to you? What about everyone else, the Goblins, the memories of all these humans that…?” Dani’s voice was soft as we discussed the worst possible outcomes.
I made sure Dani was looking at me.
Dani was silent for a full minute. “Wow, Cal, you would willingly give up everything else to keep us safe?”
Dani cut me off before I could extrapolate further, “I get it. So we just fly through the portal under you?”
“Sounds… good, I guess? I don’t think that silver is actually any more useful against them than other materials though. Why do you think that is?” Dani raised a good, fair, somewhat upsetting point.
Dani was laughing at me, and not with her usual chuckle. Mana was infusing her laughter accidentally, and the entire area was shaking and bouncing because of it. “Cal! Seriously? You got taken in by a swindler? This is just the best!”
“They are trying to make sales, Cal!” Dani groaned and rolled around in the air, trailing colored streams of light. “If the weapon is made correctly, it should kill the undead just as effectively as any other, but just maybe the knowledge that it is ‘extra effective’ might make them attack a little harder, go in for the killing blow, have a little more hope. That is what these merchants are really selling: hope. Or that’s what they would tell you, anyway; they are really just selling anything they can to make an extra copper.”
“Plus anyone who sees them will think they are all wearing Mithril, since that is something you’ve used in the past,” Dani chimed in. I froze, the gears in my head turning viciously.
“Care to share your plans?” Dani hopefully questioned. I tended to be mysterious and circumvent explanations for fun, but…
Chapter Thirty-five
“Hmm,” Bob Prime made this sound deep in his throat, and Dani bobbed in agreement with his non-verbal disagreement.
“Well, it's…” Bob hesitated, then pressed forward, “Great Spirit, this plan relies on many, many assumptions and variables. What you just told me was: ‘if he is here, in the right place, at the right time, and everything is ready, then maybe my prototype weapons will work against him if the rumors about his abilities are accurate’.”
“It is a totally viable plan!” Dani trailed off with a nervous chuckle. “Maybe it isn’t our ‘go to’ plan, though? Maybe we come up with something a little more, um, likely to work correctly?”
Dani looked over to see Bob rolling his eyes. She decided to amend her answer. “… Fine, It’s a terrible plan, Cal.”
“Wait, can you do that?” Bob Prime latched onto my last statement with excitement. “That may be more likely than the hope that Barry will bother to fight your Goblin Warlord in a duel. I’m also not sure how we distract him for ten minutes with rabbits while you power up your weapons.”
Dani cut me off before I could explain better, “I’m also not sure that he will fall into a pool of excreta, Cal. Most regular people will be able to recognize it, and S-rankers can likely do a lot more than that.” She might as well be slapping me with these cold, mean facts. “That portal idea, though, that sounds interesting. What do you need for that?”
“I vote for the portal plan;” Dani called out for a vote.
“Seconded!” Bob Prime replied with a smile. Evil! Pure evil! Humans were right about Goblins! I should have listened!
“Great Spirit!” Navigation Bob was shouting into the air to get my attention, so I popped over to his area and saw what he was pointing at. “We are appro
aching the edges of a necromantic horde!”
To think we were coming up behind this force made me wonder what their front-line shock troops would bring to bear. I didn’t usually feel bad for Humans, but this… this was… I shook off my awe, taking a moment longer to shake off my jealousy. I think that was the correct emotion to have, right? I wasn’t a huge fan of the undead, but by the abyss, I wanted a cadre of A-ranked creatures to do my bidding! I enhanced the projection, zooming in closer to inspect some of the things walking around. It still surprised me how few living creatures were down there. It was almost as though a necromancer was a mobile dungeon because they were very similar to me. For instance: if the controlling necromancer fell, the creatures he controlled would either die instantly… or go wild and then die. Hmm. I didn’t care for the fact that my abilities were parroted by such a noxious group.
I pulled myself away from the projection. At this distance, I had no way of knowing what the creatures were. I could see their form, but I wouldn’t know what they were for sure until I heard them named by someone else. I’d have to wait until we got closer and the others could sense them or see them with their weak, fleshy eyes. It wasn’t like I could invite anyone into the control room of the… but then, I didn’t need them to come here, did I? I shifted the projection and controlled the light it emitted. It took a moment or three of finagling the details, but there was now a projection of what we were flying toward that appeared on the side of one of the academy buildings.