Chapter 67 The building charge (Patreon)

Stella did not return that night, and Nathan had to explain to Aarl and Sarah that he might have taught her an Insight that was slightly too big for her.

She did return the next morning, as they were gearing up for calisthenics. A sleepy looking Dalo descended from the sky, Stella in tow. He dropped her off, fixed Nathan with a complicated look and sighed without saying anything. Then the elderly mage flew away as they started running.

Stella seemed happy, and refreshed. She took off immediately, mocking the rest of them to keep up. Khachi looked at Nathan and shrugged before they all followed along.

Cardio!

—

Nathan felt at ease over the next few days. He’d accomplished his goals at empowering the Heirs. They were deadlier than ever, and Nathan felt like his own increasing power wouldn’t end up eclipsing theirs anytime soon. If anything, he was the one falling behind!

Sarah was still practicing with her guns. She spent a lot of private tutoring time on target practice, either at the shooting range that was the Caxols’ basement, or out of the city with Stanel working on long-range shooting. She’d apparently dropped an old utility skill called [Straight Flight] that let her compensate for the effect that wind or other effects would have on a projectile for a new one, [Gunslinging]. It improved her smoothness drawing and reloading the guns. In practice she could have her guns out and aimed in a split second.

Meanwhile, Stella started practicing with electricity spells. Her parents had been hesitant to teach her very many, since they were costly spells in terms of mana, and very dangerous.

But Stella had a tool nobody else did - magnetic mana. So she was mostly reinventing existing lightning spells - the most complicated parts of those spells were directing and guiding the lightning. But magnetic mana changed that whole dynamic, and allowed Stella to create much more efficient and accurate lightning spells.

In helping her practice, Nathan got to know the humming crackle of lightning mana even better. It was a great way to quickly and efficiently recharge his stamina. Stella’s growing prowess at targeting meant she could nail him from across the battlefield with a lightning bolt to completely fill his Stamina. Nathan tried to dodge the bolts to give her better practice, but they were nearly instantaneous.

It was hard to hide that you were throwing around lightning bolts in the practice yard, and after the first practice session there were a number of awed and jealous looks thrown Stella’s way by the other Adventurer mages. Only a handful of mages in Gemore could even use lightning mana. Most of them were over level 243, since they’d had to get the mana type from a class development.

Stella was also experimenting with magnetic spells. She described the mana as ‘slippery’, and hard to control on its own. She was working on a spell that would let her grab and throw one piece of metal, instead of affecting all of the metal in a close proximity around her in hard-to-control ways.

She also didn’t try to get light mana any more. That had apparently been a firm line laid down by Kullal, though they’d promised to help her with it after graduation.

Aarl had been spurred on to improve his own efforts, and was working on using a weapon in each hand most of the time. Stella had charged his new swords with the desired mana types, and they were potent. The force-blade extended far enough to rival the reach of his favored greatsword, while the edge could take chunks out of mundane steel.

The lightning-blade struck like a thunderbolt with each blow, zapping the target with electricity while letting loose a directional detonation of concussive force. The charge only lasted for a dozen blows before Stella had to recharge it, but Aarl could deliver those dozen blows in half as many seconds. It was an impressive display of rapidly delivered firepower.

Khachi hadn’t been slacking either. His divine mana was more potent, quicker to activate and more focused. He could heal at a close range now, and was working the magic into his fighting style more.

Nathan himself felt like he was getting quite competent at hand-to-hand combat. Most importantly, he was getting comfortable parrying weapons with his bare hands. The benefits of the Rage were clear, with the enhanced speed, strength and toughness allowing him to catch a full-strength strike from one of Aarl’s unenchanted swords on his outer forearm. He’d stop the blade cold and come away with little more than a swiftly healing graze.

More and more Nathan was coming to view the spear as a tool specifically for tough-skinned monsters. The spear was fragile compared to Nathan, and he was more skilled with his bare hands. His practice bouts with Aarl were quite even, with Aarl frantically battering at Nathan and to try and keep him from getting in close to grapple. Every time Nathan managed to grab hold of Aarl he was able to overpower the younger man quickly.

Nathan had also been cashing in on his [Magic Absorption] for favors and profits.

Herdin had called him in to help cursebreak on a few items she’d had stored away. It had been a challenging afternoon, and Nathan had had to regenerate his hand after a cursed bow ate the original. Literally ate it, growing a pair of wooden jaws and snapping off the limb.

He’d broken a few items, but managed to uncurse some others. Herdin was pleased and paid Nathan in both favors and coin, promising that she’d help him figure out if the next item he cursebroke was safe to use.

{Mid-tier Identify 6 achieved!}

Dalo and Kullal also invited Nathan over one evening. Nathan was expecting to get grilled about the lightning Insight, but they only acknowledged the weight of the Insight that Nathan had given Stella. Beyond that they’d clearly agreed not to discuss the issue, with Kullal shooting Dalo a firm glare every time the older man looked like he wanted to bring the subject up.

Instead, they asked him to purify a pile of conductive quartz, contaminated with mana of all kinds. Nathan got familiar with even more varieties of mana, from the shifting strength of metal mana to the strangeness of what Nathan could only call salt mana.

{Mid-tier Spellsense 9 achieved!}

Dalo sighed and mentioned he’d lean on Kia to teach Nathan her Talent.

Aww yeah. Next best thing to flight, here I come. Honestly, it might be better than straight flight if it lets me use all of my movement skills.

The other adventuring teams were getting sent out on their own long-distance missions, killing monsters or clearing out lairs all around the villages. It seemed to be going well, and it wasn’t uncommon for a team to swagger in and brag of the levels they’d earned.

But the Heirs didn’t feel like they needed to keep up. They were already ahead, and spent a lot of time chatting together. The barriers between them were few and growing fewer. Nathan felt at home with them in a way he only had with his closest friends on Earth.

They talked about hopes, fears and dreams. Their deepening friendships led to discussions of politics, ambitions and what they would do with their growing power. No decisions were made, but they all spoke of ending evils and protecting the people of Gemore in new ways.

—

All too soon, Graduation was upon them. On the day before the Solstice, Jolba laid out what would happen. This news was new to most people, since Sudraiel was co-opting a tangle of various traditions for her ceremony.

The Solstice was a day where the sun would not appear. It would vanish one day as it usually did, a line sliding across the glowing orb to bring darkness. And then it would not appear the next day. The night sky would grow darker than usual, and wavering lines of light in the sky would replace the glowing landscape that usually spread across the sky. The sun would reappear on the dawn of the second day.

It was tradition for the Adventurers to trek up to the very top of Gemore to guard the Seal during the day of the Solstice, when the sky was dark. The seal would start glowing itself, shining brightly into the sky at noon. Sudraiel would give them a speech before having them swear the Adventurer’s Oath, next to the glowing Seal.

It sounded like a whole thing.

Nathan had another dinner with the Guardians of Gemore, catching up with Leska and Xarian some. They seemed very pleased that Nathan was keeping up with the Heirs. Xarian’s wife Krisa confided in Nathan that they’d been worried about the Heirs being completely dependent on their parents, and mostly cut off from the broader Adventurer society because of that. They were glad that Nathan was an outside influence.

Though I’m not exactly a great bridge to the rest of the Adventurers.

Some kind of horse-trading went on behind the scenes, and Kia agreed to teach Nathan the airwalking Talent. After he swore the Adventurer’s Oath at graduation.

All too soon, it was the day before the Solstice. Their classes had wrapped up without fanfare, and Nathan had never seen the Adventurer’s guild so full. The Giantraiders and dozens of other teams were back in Gemore for the Solstice.

Nathan noticed that a lot of the Adventurers were tense, and wary. He asked Vhala about it.

“Ah, yeah. Bad things happen on the Solstice. Big monster attacks. Strange magic. People say the Seal wakes it all up, that all the monsters in the world want to break the Seal on the Solstice. So we guard it, and the city people take refuge in the fortresses under the mountain. The villages hunker down too, but they’ve never been attacked. The monsters go for the Seal.” She shrugged. “Most years, nothing happens… but when something does happen, it’s always a battle worthy of remembering. On the worst years a few Questors show up to help out. But that hasn’t happened for decades.”

Nathan thanked her, then spent a few hours trying to relax with the Heirs. They were all nervous, both about Graduation and the Oath, as well as the Solstice itself. They played some card games to pass the time, conversation going to various parts of training and what kinds of jobs they wanted to take after graduation.

Nathan didn’t fully relax until he meditated before bed. There was a sense of impending doom hanging over everything. But what would come, would come. Nathan had done what he could to prepare himself and his friends for any threat they could reasonably handle, and worrying about it now would only hamper his readiness when the time finally came to act.

Anything that came at Gemore would need to contend with a city full of formidable Adventurers, ranging from the Guardians of Gemore and their peer teams all the way down to Nathan and the other trainees.

–

The next morning was quiet, as if a pall had fallen over the city. The Heirs woke up earlier than usual and didn’t do their normal exercises, instead trooping over to the dining hall in the predawn gloom. The sky was growing darker, with the continents of the skyscape overhead fading as dawn  approached. Dozens of faint pinpricks of lights started to replace the normal skyscape. They were in various colors from purple to red and looked something like stars in the sky, but spaced at regular intervals.

Breakfast was subdued. All of the trainees ate in silence, quickly finishing a hearty meal heavy on carbohydrates. Then Jolba came in and ushered them out of the dining hall, to start climbing the mountain that Gemore was built on.

The trainees were joined by all of the other Adventurers in the city, forming a silent pilgrimage up the steep slopes. The city was well-lit by magical lights mounted on buildings, and the guard was out in force. Nathan looked back over his shoulder and saw that the wall was fully manned, with lights shining outwards onto the killing field around the city.

They walked away from the Guild, up towards the peak of the city. The sky was even darker now, and Nathan realized how accustomed he’d gotten to the glowing world overhead. Now it was gone. Nathan felt like he was alone in the wilderness back on Earth, with a black sky pressing down upon him.

The mood was somber as everybody felt the oppressive darkness, with few conversations as they climbed the steep slopes of Gemore.

Nathan saw cityfolk hurrying through the darkness. They carried magical lights or torches and were congregating towards the bunkers dug into the mountain. The guard was also manning those walls, though not as heavily as the outer walls of the city.

They’re preparing for a full-scale attack on the city.

They climbed higher than Nathan had ever been, to the council chambers sheltered under the overarching stone. The building was ancient, obviously original to Old Gemore, and possessed of a level of craftsmanship and elegance that reminded Nathan of the Sagrada Família or Hagia Sophia . Nathan spent a moment examining the building, admiring its grand scale, flowing stone architecture and clear defensive nature. Then Sarah elbowed him and gestured onwards.

They walked past the council chambers to a grand staircase that cut through the stone. The staircase was a broad and high-ceilinged tunnel that climbed up the inside of the cresting wave of stone that hung over much of Gemore.

Those stairs were wide and shallow, and the space was dimly lit by magical lights set into the walls. The presence of so many people in an enclosed space made the sounds of mailed boots and hooves on stone loud and echoing, only interspersed by the occasional cough. Still nobody spoke. It seemed a solemn occasion, full of majesty.

That sense of majesty redoubled when they reached the end of the staircase, which led onto a broad and mostly-flat area atop the mountain. The dark sky stretched above them seeming ready to swallow all things in its enormity.

As Nathan gazed upwards, his eyes adjusted, and the distant dots of light came into view once more, partially blocked by a thin cloud cover. Nathan might have been imagining it, but he thought he saw some threads of light connecting the dots. The lines were shifting in color and wavering like a faint aurora borealis.

Nathan tore his gaze from the sky as the crowd of Adventurers pushed through the chill wind blowing this high up. They were high above the ruined city of Old Gemore, standing on the curved top of the mountain.

The stone underfoot was natural and rough, and there were no railings. The area they were on curved down gradually for hundreds of feat on either side of the ridge-like mountaintop. In one direction that slope suddenly dropped away over the city of Gemore, and in the other it continued downwards into the cliff that backed the mountain upon which Gemore stood.

They were headed towards the Seal, which was directly ahead of them. It had been described to Nathan like a big stone door set into the top of the mountain. Now that he saw it in person, he’d say it reminded him of a vault door from the Fallout games. Glowing blue lines traced a pattern like an irising camera lens on the forty-foot wide stone circle, and a beam of light shot upwards from the center of the Seal. Nathan squinted, and could make out spidery symbols glowing on the recessed stone surface. They looked nothing like the enchantments that Nathan had grown somewhat familiar with through Herdin’s tutelage.

On the other side of the Seal was a wide plinth, supporting an obelisk that was vague in the darkness. Sudraiel stepped up onto the plinth in front of the obelisk, and was lit from beneath by the light from the Seal. She was dressed in a sleek breastplate and fine chainmail, carrying her spear like a staff of office.

Her voice was loud and shocking after the lack of conversation on their journey up here.

“Take up your assigned positions! Trainees stay here. Scouting revealed no groupings of monsters, so we should be safe. But consider this the start of your final lesson. Take no chances on the Solstice!”

Overall Status:

{Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Magic Absorption 6

Permanent Talent 2: High-tier Regeneration 6

Talent 3: None

Class: Spellbreaker Juggernaut level 52

Class skills:

Stamina: 620/620

Juggernaut's Wrath

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Juggernaut's Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Utility skills:

High-tier Focused Mind 6

Mid-tier Earnestness 9

Mid-tier Sprinting 5

Mid-tier Spellsense 9

Mid-tier Notice 6

Mid-tier Identify 6

Mid-tier Dodging Footwork 3

Mid-tier Enhanced Memory 10

Mid-tier Lecturing 1

Low-tier Tumbling 9}