Sixth Realm

by Michael Chatfield

  This should help with the stamina deprivation by a large margin, including the title it should help me out a lot with ten realm’s ‘natural’ healing.

  Erik looked at his hands a smile breaking out on his face which turned into a laugh and a chuckle.

  I made it to Expert level healer mother fuckers! Damn that feels good.

  Erik kept on looking at the notifications, using them to cover over the aftereffects of becoming an expert. there was a flood of information, he sank deeper into thought, the connections that he had not realized before now all seemed to snap into place, using the theory he had proved. His mind was starting to connect other items together. He was now shaking, eager to test out his new ideas. He closed his eyes, taking the time to think about everything. He took out a pad of paper and wrote quick notes, scared that he might lose this inspiration.

  Once he was done he reviewed his notes and put them away, reached out his hand and with a glow of light a was revealed in his hand

  “Well that was a little sudden,” Erik laughed as he dismissed his notifications. “I’ve been hoping to get to Expert level in Alchemy but I made it with Healing first.” Makes sense, alchemy is something that I picked up in the Realms and I have been learning and trying to put people back together for most of my adult life.

  “Well this should be interesting, it should make it easier for me to temper my body.”

  “Congratulations sir,” Storbon said with a smile.

  “Thanks,” Erik said.

  “What you messing around in here with?” Rugrat asked, coming into the tent that they had erected behind the stalls to keep their patients’ modesty.

  “Just made it to Expert, you owe me a six-pack of Dougall’s beers!” Erik said.

  “Come on, I’m just building up my stock of them, I thought you were a long way off with Alchemy?”

  “I was, but not with Healing,” Erik said. “I figured something out. I was forcing myself to work in stages, I wasn’t truly combining what I knew from the past with how I can do things now. I think I know what to do with Alchemy.” Erik held his chin, sinking into thought. “I didn’t start Alchemy just for Alchemy’s sake. I started it because I wanted to use it as an aid for healing. It is a component of healing, just another tool. Everything is created from processes and stages. Medicine teaches that there are many systems: there are stages for creating magic, there are stages for creating concoctions. What if I were rushing those stages? There are not three stages, but innumerable stages, like with healing, everything is changing from one minute to the next. If your patient is stable now, they might not be in a minute.”

  Erik sat down and pulled out his cauldron.

  Rugrat seeing that Erik was concentrating, was hit by inspiration. He put down a mana- gathering formation plate and then signaled to Storbon. They grabbed the lady’s stretcher and took her out of the room.

  Erik took out a blade and removing flowers from stalks, started to prepare ingredients.

  He tossed out other ingredients, around him flames appeared and his mana blade, within his domain everything was under his control. He was preparing several items at once, flames appeared in his hands, looking like beasts some charged through his domain, opening their mouths wide to capture some in their mouths. Others charged into and around his cauldron, warming it up.

  “Alchemy is the melding of items together to create an effect, that is the theory. But in the Ten Realms, things become stronger by consuming one another. If I were to force power into something or let it draw it into itself, which wouldbe easier? Concoctions might not be alive, but through the tribulations of fire and the combinations of the right items, they are able to go from simple elements into something that will be able to change the Ten Realms. They are parts of the Ten Realms affecting the Ten Realms.”

  As Erik muttered to himself in excitement, the cauldron reached its required heat. Erik waved his hand, the cauldron opened and more flames rose from around him. They snatched the different additives, their flames changing in color as they rushed into the cauldron.

  Erik supplied them with mana, with his domain he had a complete grasp over what was happening within the cauldron. The different flame beasts with components charged one another, the cauldron turned into a battlefield, the different flames tearing one another apart. When they defeated the other, the ingredient within was consumed by the winning flame beast.

  The mixture at their core changed, the different materials lost a minimal amount of their efficacy as the fight continued.

  The beasts fought, becoming stronger and more powerful.

  Erik watched over them as their numbers reduced.

  He opened the cauldron again and more flame beasts appeared around the stronger substances. These flame beasts were larger, meeting the size and power of those within the cauldron.

  As they refined more into their body, the flame beasts grew in size and detail. Snakes, birds, and wolves attacked one another and evolved becoming dragons, phoenixes, and tigers.

  More flame creatures charged into the cauldron and each of these fire beasts was a creation from Erik, each contained his knowledge of poisons, the essence entered their bodies, tempering them, increasing their strength, the contents were being consumed, no, they were being transformed into the flame-creatures. They used Erik’s knowledge of ingredients to draw out every last bit of strength.

  Erik could feel the drain on his mana, drawing in mana through his domain, through the mana-gathering formation. He tossed out several mana stones into the cauldron, using their power to enhance the fire beasts that were waging a war within.

  The fight continued as Erik’s face was pale and drawn out. There were two flames left; a Dragon and a Tiger that looked as if they could leap out of the cauldron at any time, roared and attacked one another.

  The Tiger latched onto the Dragon’s neck and used his claws to attack the Dragon. Its body was made of shimmering colors, all of the previous flame beasts had been refined by it into its body. The Dragon let out a roar that shook the cauldron as its body became more defined and stable.

  It slapped the Tiger away with a swat.

  Its flames were colored green, blue and purple as the Tiger roared out in pain; it was the lord of the land, but the Dragon was the king of the sky.

  They clashed once again, but the Dragon had the upper hand, defeating the Tiger.

  Tiger lost the battle and its form started to fall apart, the flames that made up its body now swarmed up the Dragon. The Dragon let out a roar as its flames became stronger, its body started to become smaller as the power was concentrated to a higher degree. The Dragon curled up and its body started to shrink as a solid item was revealed in the middle of the cauldron.

  Erik infused Earth and Fire mana into the cauldron, compressing and heating the mana in the area to bend to his will. The Dragon continued to become smaller, its essence and the colored flames were drawn into the spherical item that was in the middle of its body.

  It continued to become smaller and smaller and a pill was revealed. The flames danced around, becoming part of the pill, runes appeared on the outside of the pill and a Dragon appeared to run around the outside of the pill. Its eyes were closed but when looking at it one would think that they could open at any minute, unleashing the power of the dragon contained within.

  The flames under the cauldron faded away and Erik let out a breath. His mind was tired from the mental stress that came with creating so many different beasts from his flames.

  A flood of golden power erupted from the Ten Realms as Erik felt it rushing into his body, he surged with power and once again his mind agitated with what he had learned.

  With healing, he had learned the body as a system, the body as a whole. With Alchemy he had learned the Fire Beast Consummation technique.

  These two techniques had the same basic theory: small exact changes happening at the right time will have a multiplicative effect upon one another to increase the overall effect more than just one large
effect.

  “Why use a sword when I could use a kitchen knife? A Roman soldier is just a man with a shield. Alone they are weak, together they are strong. Instead of fighting against the Ten Realms, the ingredients, my tools, I have to accept them. I should look for synergies within them instead of differences.” Erik said, his voice became faint as a secondary wave of fatigue fell over him. This blood infusion pill only focuses on helping a person with blood loss recover and heal their circulatory system. An artifical circulatory system until they can be properly healed.

  The lights dimmed as Erik collapsed after he finished his last note. He had a smile on his face as he sat there slumped over his work.

  Chapter: How could you beat me?

  “Erik opened his eyes to find that he was inside the room he and Rugrat shared at the outpost’s inn.

  “Collapsed after working on your pill. Thankfully you were inside the mana-gathering formation or else we might have more people bugging us about what happened. The guards came over to ask us what was happening, but we just covered it up and agreed to heal some of their minor or hidden injuries to keep them on their way,” Rugrat said.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  Erik scratched his head awkwardly.

  “Damn overachiever,” Rugrat said darkly.

  Erik let out a dry laugh, remembering the stream of notifications that he had ignored.

  He pulled out a smithing book and sat back on his bed. Muttering about people achieving back-to back breakthroughs showing off.

  Erik checked through his notifications.

  ==========

  Skill: Alchemy

  ==========

  Level: 75 (Expert)

  ==========

  Able to identify 1 effect of the ingredient.

  Ingredients are 5% more potent.

  ==========

  ==========

  Upon advancing into the Expert level of Alchemy, you will be rewarded with one randomly selected item related to this skill.

  ==========

  You have received the item: Iron Castle

  +100,000 EXP

  ==========

  ==========

  58,087,321/86,100,000 EXP till you reach Level 60

  ==========

  “Just amde it to leve___!”

  “Ah shit!” Rugrat yelled to the heavens.

  “What is it?”

  “You finally passed my level! And you are an expert in two crafts! How can I keep going!”

  Erik rolled his eyes at Rugrat’s melodramatics.

  “Watch the area for me, I’m going to allocate my stat points.”

  “What was the pill you made?” Rugrat asked.

  “Oh, this?” Erik pulled out the pill in its sealed bottle, even sealed the area seemed to warm up.

  Erik grinned and threw it to Rugrat.

  Rugrat caught it and looked from it to Erik.

  “It is an inscribed pill to help one recover lost blood. I was finessing over all of the small stuff. Trying to make some master pill that does it all. Though blood loss is one of the major reasons that people die on a battlefield. With this it deals with jsut the bleeding. Not too fancy, but it can save so many people with that one effect.”

  “You really know how to treat a guy, always with pills and potions,” Rugrat rolled his eyes.

  “Were you able to get any more information on the Orcs?”

  “Still want to raid them?”

  “You know it.”

  “Yeah I got some, it looks like there are several camps and then roving bands of them. The basic Orcs are between level fifty three in the outer reaches to sixty in the inner reaches, all of them have the strength of the same level human with Body like Stone cultivation and they have a berserker skill that stacks.”

  “Stacks?” Erik interrupted.

  “The more Orcs in an area, the more powerful the buff. If there are five of them, they get a five percent bonus to their attacks and they don’t feel pain. Ten of them, they get a ten percent bonus, all the way to a forty percent bonus, even if there are one hundred of them, they don’t exceed a forty percent strength bonus. Well, unless they have some of their shamans buffing them.”

  “Alright, go on,” Erik said.

  “Each of the bands have captains which are stronger powerful versions, sometimes shamans. They’re intelligent and a big pain in the ass. The camps can have up to five of these captains and at least three shamans as well as a boss level monster, a camp leader. They have different skills, some are shamans, some are fighters.

  They’re going to be one hell of a fight, but if we can clear out a camp, they act as mini-dungeons. We get a bunch of bonuses, experience and loot wise, for clearing out the place. If we can clear out a string of them, then we can even earn a title and I heard that it is possible to learn the Berserk skill.”

  Just looking at Rugrat, Erik could tell that he was eager to get started.

  “We’ll level up with the others and get used to fighting the Orcs before we hit a camp. Reach Body like Iron first. It’ll take you a few days to digest that pill, I’ll make sure nothing goes wrong.”

  “Camp raiding, this should be good!” Rugrat grinned.

  “About time we did something other than hiding in cities and towns. I’m going to put in my stat points now. See you in the morning!”

  name:

  Chapter: Rugrat’s Tempering

  Yuli, Erik and Storbon were with Rugrat.

  “Formations are set, I’ll be outside,” Storbon said.

  It was the middle of the night and there weren’t many people that were around. The remainder of the Special team was dotted all around the residence that they were staying in, making sure that no one approached.

  “Let's start then,” Erik said.

  Rugrat opened up the pill bottle with Delilah’s Expert level Heartflame Transformation pill. Heat spread through the glass and into his hand making him feel a deep itch in his bones.

  Rugrat looked at Yuli and Erik, they were there to make sure that if anything did go wrong then they would deal with it.

  He breathed out and then tossed the pill back and swallowed.

  “Tastes like cinnamon hearts,” he said with a smirk.

  Then his expression twisted as he felt burning heat spreading through his body. He let out a yell as mana started to be drawn in from the area and the candles around them started to tilt in his direction, the Fire mana reacting to him.

  He let out a groan and fell back against the floor. Threads of heat traced through his body, reaching his veins and expanding. It coursed through his muscles while it burned, it also brought with it an immense amount of power. He felt his muscles starting to transform, his body expelling impurities as his body and his mana was refined.

  Waves of heat washed through his body, the room’s heat increased several degrees as Rugrat broke out in a sweat, his muscles straining as his veins popped out.

  He opened his eyes and a red embers seemed to float within his pupils before he closed them again. There was a burning smell as smoke started to rise from his body, his sweat being evaporated through the heat he was expelling.

  Conscious thought disappeared as his head was pounding, he felt that the magma was burning him from the inside.

  A roar of flame filled his body. Within his mana channels he could see small sparks burning thorugh his mana channels and his body. He circulated his mana channels, it provided some relief as the sparks weren’t all burning the same spot, but now the burning had spread throughout his body. His breaths came and went through his teeth, the sparks bloomed into flames, setting him alight from inside, then they dimmed as the pill’s healing effects repaired all the damage. He didn’t have time to examine any changes as his body was set aflame again.

  So it continued steam rose from his body as he twitched and hissed in pain. His mana channels could be seen with red and blue flames dancing inside.

  Black impurities were pushed out of his pores as he en
dured it all.

  He felt a surge of power through his body, invigorating him as his body felt alive.

  A part of him knew that he had reached Body like Iron, but the flames were still tearing through his body.

  He held on, forgetting time, just trying to focus on other things, making promises to himself: he would have beers, the food he would eat, the vacation he would go on, all to alter his mind and focus on anything but the pain.

  The flames gradually started to die down within his body.

  He expelled a hot breath, he had to take a few moments to focus his mind and to, remember what was going on.

  “How are you feeling?” Erik asked, using a clean spell on Rugrat and removing the impurities that his body had expelled.

  “Warm,” Rugrat said.

  “Look at the floor,” Yuli said.

  Rugrat looked back to see that the wooden floor had been blackened with heat.

  “Well, I’m not sure if we’re going to get the deposit back for that one,” he laughed.

  Erik helped him to his feet. He was incredibly tired but it didn’t take him much effort in order to stand up. He shook his body lightly, feeling the power that was coiled up in his muscles, it felt like he would be able to get through anything.

  Erik helped him to his bed and gave him a high-grade stamina potion, as soon as it touched Rugrat’s tongue his forgotten hunger came back with a vengeance.

  He gulped down the potion and Erik had another ready for him when he had finished the first. It took three high Journeyman level stamina potions for him to sate his stamina loss.

  Fed and tired, Rugrat felt his body putting the stamina potions to work as he collapsed, his body like a puppet with the strings cut as he passed out on his bed.

  Chapter: Top Ten

  The fighting had heated up within the Battle Arena, the city had even more people in it than when the competition started.

  Gu Chen was watching it all. Yi Yin had been able to secure a spot in the top forty, as an assassin appeared behind him sending out strikes at his back, he was thrown forward, the mana barrier around him flashing into existence. The assassin who was moving to follow up the attack jumped to the side, a victorious look on his face as people let out cheers.