Essence Wave Book 2 Chapter 21 (Patreon)

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

Had a great time camping this weekend, still got about 2k words both yesterday and today. Bit of leveling and system building here, hope you enjoyed it!

Should be a post this Wednesday, probably Stormy Mountain, and then Legacy of the M'Zee on Sunday next week. 

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

“Seneschal,” David called, “let me know as soon as you hear from the other teams, please.”

“Of course,” Josiah replied.

David turned to Liz and Aly. “The refugees need to rest,” Liz said. “We pushed them hard and they were neglected and malnourished.”

“Okay,” David nodded. “I’m going to meditate for a while, then. I’m close to Apprentice in several Skills, and I’m going to try to drive them over the edge. Tell me when it’s been two hours?”

“Sure,” Aly said. “I’m going to hunt, see about bringing down a deer or a few rabbits or something. No elk though.”

“Yup, no elk,” David laughed. “If you meet them again, though, you should continue to build rapport.”

She reached over and ruffled his hair. “Of course,” she said, rolling her eyes at him.

Colin just shook his head and walked off, while Liz turned towards the closest Farm. David waved at them, then dove into his core cave. “Okay,” he said aloud, “Shield and Sword Mastery. Shield is closest.” He moved to the quasi-office that his Inscribing Scholar’s Focus Skill had placed just to the side of the surface, such that it was, of his core cave.

He looked around, once again marveling at the ridiculousness of the System, or the Essence Wave. “Why do I feel like I’m mixing the worst parts of a LitRPG Apocalypse novel with a xianxia web-novel?” He laughed, looking at his cores. “I could cultivate, and then find some young master to face slap.” He laughed for a few seconds, then shook his head, “Okay, time to focus.”

With an effort of will, he brought up his motions to block the Imps attacks, examining each movement and use of Energy. He found hundreds of tiny imperfections, slight shifts where he could have moved a minuscule amount differently and have deflected the attack better or prevented a fraction of the damage from impacting him.

On a whim, he focused on the wall behind himself, imagining a door. He pressed, feeling a resistance, but he pushed at it, forcing the image on the wall. After a few subjective minutes, his head was pounding, but a door slowly appeared. At first it was indistinct, but he didn’t stop. He grabbed Mana from his core, then Energy, and pushed them into the mental construct. Another few minutes, and the door snapped in place. He pictured a large training room with training dummies behind it.

The drain on his Mana and Energy quadrupled, and then doubled after that. His mental avatar dropped to its knees, a migraine that shattered his conscious connection to it crashing into him as both his Energy and Mana bottomed out.

It took him a few seconds, during which his Mana and Energy regenerated, for him to notice that his Hit Points had dropped by almost five hundred. A flashing notification distracted him from the pain that was still stabbing into his brain.

Congratulations! You have forcibly advanced your Skill: Inscribing Scholar’s Focus [R]. It has evolved to Scholar’s True Focus [Epic]! Level increased!

Name: Scholar’s True Focus [Epic]

Level: Apprentice 1

Description: (Add Inscribing Scholar’s Focus). Able to use Mana and Energy to power mental constructs, training yourself with the insights gained by the Skill. Use Energy and Mana to modify your core cave by adding or changing already placed rooms.

Rooms Placed: Study - increased focus and Skill level gain for mental and magical Skills

Training Room - increased focus and Skill level gain for physical Skills. Two practice dummies will come to life and fight at your Skill level.

“That’s cool,” he whispered to himself, then engaged Advanced Bodily Repair to reduce the pounding of his head. After a few minutes of just lying on the ground, he finally got enough focus to dive back into his core cave.

Once there, the pounding that had devolved into a dull roar dropped away. He checked and saw that his Shield Mastery had improved to Apprentice One. “Alright!” He said. “Halfway there. Woah oh, living on a pray-er!” With a laugh, he sang a few verses from a song he enjoyed. “Now it’s time-ime for Sword Mastery-ee. No, that, that was bad. And I’m punch-drunk or something. Let’s try out my new mental room thingy.”

He shook his mental head, then moved through the study to the training room. The training room was ten meters by ten meters. The floor was the kind of gym mat you’d find in the most upscale gym in your town. Every wall was a mirror, and the dummies he’d imagined had turned into two wooden people, reminiscent of the crash-test dummies used in car development.

He pulled up his mental view of the last fight he used his sword, focusing on how he cut into the Grunt Alphas. Every movement was examined, every twitch critiqued. When he was done, he looked over at one of the dummies. It’d changed into a Grunt Alpha, then bounded at him. Its claws slashed at him, and all he could do was dive to the side.

His sword appeared in his hands, the perfect mixture of Earth, Metal, and pure Mana. The Alpha swung its hand at him, and he responded by deflecting the attack over his head, swinging a slicing cut as a reflection of the attack. His blade sliced through the fake Daemon’s throat, dropping it to the ground. David panted for a few seconds, then turned to the other dummy.

There were two, again, and they both turned into Alphas and jumped to attack him. He fought desperately, unable to activate any of his Skills, until his sword stabbed into the last standing Alpha’s mouth, dropping it to the floor. He was covered in cuts and bruises, which faded from his mental body and memory very quickly.

“That was fun!” He exclaimed. A quick check showed his Sword Mastery Skill had reached Beginner 20, just on the cusp of advancing. “I love that I can train in my own mind, and it counts!” He said. He tried to summon another Alpha, but he’d tapped out that particular memory. He searched back in his mind, and then went over the battle with the Harvester.

Two minutes of subjective time later, and his mental body was reforming in the training room. He’d been ripped apart and then eaten, but he got a few ideas of sword movements and footwork that would help him better dodge the pounce of something ten times his size. He turned back to the dummies, and they morphed into the Harvester yet again.

He screamed out, then yelled at the dummies, “I’ve fought the thing five times, and still can’t last more than three minutes! Why?! This is crazy!” Sitting down, he put his head in his hands and breathed deeply for a bit. “Of course I can’t beat the thing alone, with no Skill but Sword Mastery. We barely beat it when there were the four of us and a dozen leveled-up elk. Why am I beating myself up about this?”

He checked his Skill, and it was dinged, leveling to Apprentice 2 while he watched. “Alright! I’ve got six of the required eight Apprentice Skills to advance. I have two Skill Stone choices available too. Do I want to use them on something that is close and guarantee the advancement, or do I pick the hardest to level Skills to push ahead with the stones?”

For a couple of minutes, he sat in the chair in the study and debated with himself. Finally, he came to a conclusion, “Staying alive and being able to keep going will help the most. So, let’s work on Advanced Bodily Repair and Earth’s Unrelenting Motion.” With a few mental gymnastics, he summoned both Skill Stones into his hands, even though he wasn’t cognizant of his physical body.

A single thought activated the Advanced Bodily Repair stone, and he found himself dangling in a black void. A slice of pain, and his left leg was sliced away. “Heal yourself,” a voice commanded. David focused on his body, directing the healing Energy and Mana to his leg. He guided it as it built out his bones, muscles, tendons, skin, and Mana and Energy channels.

Immediately after he finished fixing his leg, a blade of something cut his right arm off. “Heal yourself,” the same voice boomed across the void.

After his right arm, he lost his right leg, then his left arm. Each time, he had to rebuild them as they were. The blade cut out his kidney, and then his intestine. Over and over he lost body parts, each time requiring quick thinking and specific guidance to fix the damaged pieces. The last two were the hardest.

The second to last had the entirety of the front of his throat ripped out. He had to quickly rebuild the arteries and veins before he bled out, then he had to rebuild his breathing tube before he suffocated. Finally, he fixed the rest, taking deep gasping breaths.

Four breaths in, and his heart was cut out of his chest. He frantically rebuilt his heart while also forcing Mana and Energy throughout his entire circulatory system, replacing his need for oxygen until the heart repair was complete. Then he lost his heart and lungs at the same time. After that, he had to replace every organ. He failed this one the first time, and the second time, and the third time. Each time, he realized that he had to maintain a number of organs’ effects while also repairing them in a critical order. Finally, on his seventeenth attempt, he correctly healed everything.

Once he finished the last challenge, he reappeared in his core cave. His mental projection just collapsed, laying flat on the spongy mat and breathing deeply. David just shivered for a few subjective minutes, trying to process the horror of the last however long that took. “Was it worth it,” he whined to himself, opening his Status and checking. “Apprentice five. I’ll take it.”

He struggled to his feet, staggering slightly, and sent a wave of Energy through his body. The Energy fixed and calmed his nerves, reducing the inflammation in his head and soothing the aches he’d developed from tensing muscles too tightly. “I could get used to this,” he laughed. “Okay. Earth’s Unrelenting Motion Skill Stone. Please don’t be as bad.”

With a thought, he activated the next Skill Stone. He found himself drifting in space without a body, just a point of perspective. A massive planet spun beneath him, moving far too quickly to be real. Something streaked out of the blackness, a vast beam of green energy that splashed over the planet. Immediately, the planet slowed, its rotation and translation through space disrupted by whatever the beam was.

A deep brown, dark enough to seem black at times, slowly extruded from the planet’s surface. Well, it seemed slow, but it covered his vision nearly instantly. The beam fought against it, but the deepest brown was inevitable. The Earth Energy proved unrelenting, driving the attacking beam away. The planet’s motion never stopped. Once the opposing force was removed, the planet’s rotation restored itself.

“Understand!” A voice boomed.

The scene repeated itself several times, and David tried to imprint upon his mind every bit of it. Something profound was happening, with both the beam of energy trying to slow the planet and its response being full of deeper meaning.

He then found himself standing in a hallway. The door in front of him, only a dozen meters away, said exit. David looked around, and shrugged. “Won’t be that easy, but okay,” he said, then started to jog forward. After only a few steps, a familiar beam of green energy shot out from above the door.

Every muscle in his body tensed up, and his next step forward took almost twice as much energy as it should have. The feeling got worse slowly, to where the fifth step was taking three times as much. He grit his teeth and bent into the beam, as it started to feel like a hurricane force breeze shoving him backward.

“This isn’t working. Energy, I’m supposed to use Energy somehow,” he said, as he slid backwards a meter. The push dropped away quickly as he was shoved down the hallway. He started walking forward again, trying to direct Energy across his skin like the planet had across its surface.

He flew back down the hallway, landing on his butt for the fifth time in a row. “Okay, not that way,” he said. “Maybe I need to spin the Energy?” He started to spin it as he exuded it out of his skin. The resulting sheer threw him into the wall, and then drove him backwards yet again.

Finally, after the seventh attempt at that, he just sat down and thought. “So, the planet spun the Energy, but that didn’t work for me. Why?” He talked to himself. “The planet itself was spinning. Is that the key? Do I need to direct the Energy to mimic my motion?”

He sprung to his feet, then stepped forward. He focused on pushing his Energy to his skin, and then flinging it forward with every step. When the beam hit him, it was deflected off the Energy, and by projecting it along his plane of motion, he prevented the beam from throwing him backwards. It took him nearly twenty minutes to walk the full distance, each step deliberate and slow so the Energy would flow right, but he made it. He opened the door, and found himself back in his core cave.

“Apprentice one,” David said. “I made it. Barely in that case, so I must have missed something. Oh well, that works for me, because I’ve got this notification now!”

Congratulations on completing Global Quest: Become an Apprentice!

Reward: You are now an Apprentice! Every Skill used on someone of a lower Tier than yourself will receive a small increase in effectiveness. Increases with the number of Tiers below you they are. Additional miniscule increase in all Skills efficiency and power!

Global Quest Received: Become a Journeyman

Congratulations! You are the first person on your world to reach the Apprentice Tier! You are the third person in your quadrant to reach the Apprentice Tier!

Rewards: 1000 Essence! Small increase changed to lesser. Miniscule changed to small! Tiny increase in leveling all Skills through the Apprentice Tier!

Global Quest Received: Become a Journeyman

Requirements: Walk 6 Journeyman Ways (1/6), 6 Skills at Journeyman 1+ (0/6), Level 12+

“Totally worth it!” David said, coming out of his core cave. He looked around and saw Colin practicing his Berserker’s Leap Skill. “I did it!” He shouted to him. “I finished the Apprentice Quest. Now I got to get my Skills higher, again.”

“You know,” Colin said when he jogged over. “I get the feeling that we’re leveling and getting Ways done faster than normal. You know, since our Skills are lagging so far behind the rest of the requirements from these quests?”

“Could be,” David said. “Maybe most people on other planets don’t fight as many Daemons as we do, or something?”

“It could be that children are trained in Skills to a much higher extent,” Colin said. “I mean, it’s only been a few weeks that we’ve had access to the System. If we had it since we were children, don’t you think we’d have a few Skills higher? Even if they improve slower if you don’t have life or death fights?”

“Good point,” David said. “Well, what Skills do you need to get to Apprentice?”

He looked over his Status again. “Berserker’s Leap is close, as is Power Attack and Strengthen. Lightning Strike is my newest Beginner Skill and I want it higher too.”

“Well, I can work on Mana Shield, Power Attack, and Combat Reflexes while you do those,” David said. “Now bring it.”

Colin shook his head, then Leaped away. He landed with a puff of dirt, turned around, and Leaped back at David. The crash of his halberd smashing into David’s shield drew gazes from the other’s in the fortification, especially from two of the rescued people. They watched in trepidation, horror, and awe as the two high level people bashed at each other, sending each other crashing to the ground or flying through the air over and over again.

The occasional blood spray from a hit that got through their defenses just made the overly enthusiastic fighters laugh, and further cemented in the mind of the watchers not to mess with them. Things grew worse for them when Liz joined in, healing injuries and causing them in equal measure. Colin finally collapsed, exhausted, and left David and Liz sending ranged Mana attacks at each other for another ten minutes before she shook her head. “Your regeneration is insane,” she said. “You need to work on your spike damage. I can’t imagine what it’ll be like.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Good call on that.”

“What happened here?” Aly asked, walking in the north gate hauling two partially-dressed deer carcases. “Also, help with these?”

“I can help,” the male archer from the wall said, rushing over. “I’m building towards a ranger-like build. Used to hunt with my dad.”

“Thanks,” she said. “Show me how, once they give an explanation?”

“We were just sparring,” David said.

Aly threw her head back, looking into the sky and shaking her head, “Come on, let’s learn how to dress a deer.”