Law of Consequences- Chapter 4 (Patreon)

Extended family bit me in the backside yesterday- I felt bad for not getting out more chapters to you in Law of Consequences.

So here is a second one today. Now the next one will post at 10 pm CST on Monday May 29th. And then each day after that. It could be 1-3 chapters depending on how many I get done, but it will probably be on the lower side at first while I get ahead.

I'm on vacation next week - driving to Florida with the wife and kids, so I'll try to get ahead tomorrow and will still be working but may not be able to put out multiple chapters per day.




Chapter 4- Dual Cultivation for the Win

After we agreed that the duel would happen in half an hour, the one-eyed orc who had identified himself as Tanin went into the inn with his party. I guess they thought that would keep me from listening in on what they were saying.

Maybe it would have, if I had tried, but something was telling me that if I focused on my soul stat that I’d be able to sense a butterfly’s wings beating on the other side of the outpost. I had to a lot to think about, but right now my focus was on Josie.

I couldn’t help but grinning as I saw her bouncing from one foot to the other. The bond already told me that she was thrilled about this. She hadn’t said anything but I could guess. My grin was because I could only imagine how a wife on Earth, and a new mother at that, would have reacted to the idea of her husband nominating her for a duel.

I hadn’t even asked her, but I knew it wasn’t necessary. In fact, when she saw my grin she said, “Let me guess, you’re just marveling that I’m so excited about this duel.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “Guilty as charged.” I seemed to say that a lot more. It seems that I wasn’t the only one whose perception was increasing.

“Don’t be like that. You handled it perfectly. You treated me as your wife, your deputy, and your Mistress of the Wall. You’re probably asking yourself if you should have at least checked with me telepathically to see if I was okay with this, but most husbands can’t do that. What kind of broken world would we have if a wife didn’t support her husband on important decisions like this?

“What’s more, I know that I can take him. You know that I can take him. You would never have agreed to this if you didn’t believe I could. So, I’m thrilled for this. And I’ve been cooped up while pregnant. It’s time for me to cut loose a bit. I promise to at least try not to kill him.”

I pulled her in and we embraced. It was a mutual thing built upon our understanding of one another. As messed up as this is by Earth standards, I had just been the perfect husband in her eyes.

“Okay, but we shouldn’t underestimate them. The elf has some big trick up his sleeve which he thinks can take out a B ranked existence. So we are gonna buff you up as much as possible. Show me the gear that Mursha and Rava enchanted for you, please. I’d like to double check it.”

She winked at me, knowing that this was a stretch for me and so the least she could do for me was accommodate my nervousness.

Bracers of Gravitational Deflection- these bracers are filled with a combination of Gravity Mana and Research Mana. They will help the wearer to precisely deflect incoming strikes and can be activated to add more impact to an attack. They grant the skill: Defensive Fighting. The bracers are specially built to be able to expand with the user.

Passive Boosts:

Defensive Fighting +10

Strength: +10

Active Ability:

Mini-Meteor Strike- add the gravity fueled impact of a miniature meteor to your blow. May be fused with Fire Mana for even greater effect. 2 uses then 2 hour cool-down.

Breastplate of Distortion- this chest piece is a combination of small mithril plates woven into a reinforced fibrous framework. It is specially built to be able to grow with the user. It combines the power of Space Mana and Physical Enhancement Mana.

Passive Boosts:

Strength: +5

Agility: +10

Durability: +5

Active Ability:

Disruption Field- the user appears to be just slightly out of place from where they actually are as space is distorted around them. Duration: 1 minute. Cool-down: 5 minutes.

They had done their part. I considered trying to enhance the two objects with Ki. I felt that I just understood everything so much more deeply. Yet, I didn’t want to take the risk of damaging them right before a duel, so I put away the idea of infusing my ki into them.

That said, I still had some potions which I could give her. When I pulled them out, she said, “No, that would be cheating.”

I shook my head, but she folded her arms and started tapping her foot while her tail stopped moving and became rigid. I knew what that look meant. So rather than disputing, I reached out with Soul Projection.

This use of it was still new, but I was able to decipher some of their intent. What I caught was enough to make my eyes widen. That was a truly impressive power. I scoffed a bit when he said it could take down a B rank, but now I was pretty sure he wasn’t overselling it at all.

“You’re either wearing Sativa’s ring or you’re taking the potions. The elf really does have a special ability. He has Merger Mana, and he has apparently discovered how to take some of the stats from each of their team and give them all to their leader. I get the sense that his stats are going to probably triple from what they are now. That will make him a solid B rank threat. We’re just lucky that he can’t simply combine the flat stat numbers.”

Josie’s confident façade slipped for just a second. If I didn’t know her so well, I might have missed it. As it was, I knew that she understood the danger that meant. “Fine, I’ll take the potions, but only right before the fight.”

“Fair enough, but I’m beginning to wonder if that’s going to be enough. You’ve only really started cultivating, so it hasn’t had a chance to truly enhance you.”

“You could always help me cultivate.”

“Gladly, but that takes time. In fact, we should have started this already. I’m going to need to allot some time each day to cultivate with the group of you who have mana cores now.”

She pressed herself up against me again. “I was thinking about something more intimate, something a bit more hands on.”

I grinned. “You’re talking about the technique that Rava got from Telmorra? We haven’t tried it yet, so I don’t really know if it works. Even the goddess warned her that it might not work since I’m not a follower of Telmorra.”

“Right, but you are a follower of Sativa. You’re her chosen representative and wearing a ring, she gifted you in the hope you’d become her consort.”

“Which I won’t be doing.”

“Yes, yes, we’ve talked about that. I’m fine with it. My goddess wants you. You’re already doing what she wants on this world. If she wants more, she’ll have to convince you herself, especially since she up and disappeared.”

I looked around. A few of the people were peeping out of windows and doors while trying to decide if it was safe to come outside. I yelled at the inn. “Tanin, we’re going to go out of town, but we’ll be back before the thirty minutes is up.”

Then I grabbed Josie, wrapped her up in my Ki Aura and triggered Blink Body in single leap, but I could still travel almost six miles. Then I laughed as we appeared a couple miles outside of the outpost in the only location I could visualize clearly. Something about the pair of trees here had stuck in my mind.

“Give me a second, I need to use a reward that I was granted earlier.”

She looked at me strangely but didn’t say anything. Then I turned my mind inside. There in the back of my mind separate yet still a part of me I found a tiny prismatic mass of well, to be blunt, I wasn’t sure what it was made of. It wasn’t mana, and I couldn’t see anyway to break it down. It didn’t look like a soul at all and it definitely wasn’t ki, but I still felt a connection with it.

The only thing that came into my mind as I looked at it was: An Unrealized Aspect of Infinity.

Hmm… as I probed it with my mind, I didn’t really learn anything more, but I immediately knew how to use the gift it had. It was like this was raw creative power and it could basically rewrite any aspect of me, yet; it was wholly willing to do as I instructed it. For now, I only used four out of the fifty charges and boosted Blink Body up to 20 . Now, I could teleport ninety-nine point three miles with a single use of Blink Body.

I triggered it, and instantly Josie and I were back in our bedroom. I wobbled for just an instant as that had been a much greater drain on my power than any of the prior uses. That only made sense. But I recovered in a single second, so hopefully with practice I’d be able to boost the skill and make even greater jumps. This power really was broken. I just needed to spend the time to think about the best way to increase it.

Then Josie drove all thoughts from my mind. She pressed her hands against my chest and shoved me back onto the bed. I grinned at her enthusiasm.

“We’ve only got twenty-four minutes before we have to be back there.”

“You’ve never needed that long before.”

“What are you calling me a minute, man?” I asked in mock protest.

She locked her lips onto mine with a kiss, which would have taken away my breath if I still needed to breathe.

“As if. I’ve been on the receiving end from you far too many times to ever think that, but Rava said that attaining a state of physical oneness is essential for the technique. I just hope that Lina doesn’t come rushing in. She has some way of always telling when any of the others of us are with you.”

“I’m using my Ki Aura to block out anyone from sensing we're here. We’ll have as much privacy as is possible.”

She sat up with her hands still fumbling to gain access. A question was written across her face as she asked, “You can do that?”

When I started to explain, she just shook her head. “You know what, I don’t care right now. You can tell me all about it later. Now, I want this. I want us to be one and want you to cultivate through me.”

The throes of passion only lasted a fraction of how long we might have gone otherwise. I didn’t know how long the technique was going to take, but I also knew that Rava had stressed that intimacy was key.

Well, Josie was definitely doing her best to be as closely connected to me as possible, repeatedly.

When she finally collapsed on my chest, I knew that it might have been fast, but something about the urgency had made it extra satisfying. It probably didn’t hurt that I just felt so much more attuned to everything around me.

Then I began to pull mana into me or rather into my cores, spinning first my body core, then my mind core, and finally my still forming soul core. Once I got them spinning, I focused on Josie.

I smiled. I had been questioning if I should have tried this technique when Rava first revealed it yesterday, but now, I knew that the business we’d been experiencing wasn’t a distraction, I just hadn’t been ready. Whatever had changed in me, I was now able to see the world differently.

That included how I saw Josie. She was still my gorgeous foxkin wife with the fiery temper, but I saw her core now. Not just because I was probing it, but because I could see how Sativa had activated it. It seemed so intuitive now. I knew immediately that forming cores for anyone else would be much easier moving forward.

What was important now though was that I added her core to the circuit and began to pull mana through it first. Her take on the world was different. At first her core simply pulled in the mana of the word and converted it all to Fire and Growth Mana, but I stopped that. It made perfect sense, that was the way her power was set up, but I was going to bypass that. I knew all mana was at its core just energy. She might only be able to utilize it in a couple of ways, but there was no reason for me to be so limited.

I was a body cultivator. In light of everything happening, it seemed like I needed to remind myself. That was the foundation of my power and her mana core was part of her body, which because of our bond was part of my body. The connection was close enough, and that was all that I needed.

Warning: you are attempting to introduce mana in an incompatible form into the core of Josephine Case.

The system message pushed into my mind, but I shoved it aside. I was confident this would work. Josie trembled. Her core shook, but my ki reinforced it. A host of my abilities were activated.

Soul Projection pushed me into her spiritually just as much as I was inside her physically.

Soul Builder and Ki Infusion allowed me to reinforce her core and strengthen it. Oh, then I saw it.

There were limits on her core. She was supposed to have to struggle to grow it. For a moment, I questioned if I should expand her core without making her work through those limits herself, but then I decided, that Josie and I were one. Our very souls were bonded, so I pushed.

Soul Bond with Josephine Case has evolved. Soul Bond becomes Singular Soul Bond. You will both enhance one another.

I almost lost the notification as the wave of change swept through me, no through us. The oneness became even closer and now her core along with my three cores were all cycling mana blended with ki faster than I’d ever done before. The connection just made it impossible to feel where she stopped and I began. And I didn’t care a tiny bit about it.

The only reason I ended the cycling was because the part of my Parallel Mindwhich I had set to watch the time so to speak warned me that we only had a single minute to get back.

It was both sublime and painful and I pulled out of her physically and spiritually. Our union ended, but the notification popped up showing how we were both forever changed. We scrambled to do up our clothes as I read the notifications.

You have reached the second level of a Soul Bond. Going any further would end your individuality. Because the basis for this was your unique body cultivation, your bodies share as much as your souls do.

Each of you will now share 10% of the others stats.

Josephine Case should not be able to obtain a Synergy Stat, but as she is one with you, she shares in your universal concept. This does not make you her patron, but rather she has been elevated to become one with you more fully.

Josephine Case’s cultivation level has dramatically evolved because of this singular moment. Future sessions will have much more limited impact.

Cultivation Grade: C0

C-Rank Mana Fortification: 99%

Dual Core: Fire and Growth Mana- compatible with base mana.

When I finished reading, all I could do was say, “Wow.”