Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 18 - A Prelude to Training (Patreon)

Training is one of the most hotly contested subjects in all the universe. Some believe that hyper-focusing on one aspect of a person’s development is the key. Others think that a well-rounded approach is better. Still others resort to methods that more resemble torture than training. But the reality is that there is no perfect solution because the most important facet of a person’s development is their own persistence.

Alistaris Kargat

Picking up our equipment proved easy enough, though that was probably because of the presence of a storage node that let Patrick access his own spatial storage without using his own Mist. Otherwise, we’d have looked a bit odd carrying the enormous crates of parts he’d bought from the cyclops junker. He claimed it was all valuable, but no matter how I looked at it, it all looked like trash to me.

But at least it wasn’t terribly expensive.

Either way, it wasn’t long before Patrick and I were on our way out of the city. It took a little while to traverse the space, mostly because the traffic had increased considerably. In addition, we stopped and enjoyed a late supper at a restaurant we’d noticed on our way in. It wasn’t complex food, but the cook was skilled enough to make the simple fare stand out.

Besides, I knew it was probably the last time we’d have the opportunity to splurge on such a meal. Money wouldn’t be a problem – we still had a significant fortune, even after our shopping spree – but time was going to be a factor moving forward. After all, we only had nine months left until the end of the quarantine. When that happened, we’d be going to war. So, that time would have to be spent in training.

Our backs were already against the wall, and there was no way I was going to let myself wander into a war without positioning myself as well as possible. Anything else would spell disaster.

And given that I had a lot of new toys to play with, I was more than a little eager to get going. First, though, we needed to get back to the Leviathan and find somewhere appropriate to set up a training program. I had some ideas about where to do just that, but I wanted to run them by Patrick before I finalized any plans. So, when we reached the Leviathan, I finally broached the subject.

“I want to go back to Mobile,” I said.

“What? Why?” he asked.

“Two reasons,” I answered. There were really three, but I was keeping one to myself. “First, it’s isolated enough that we should be able to train in peace. The closest city is what’s left of Nova, and the people that live there aren’t in any position to range that far.”

I narrowed his eye, and I saw a slight flicker in his cybernetic on the other side. That was new. Or maybe he was just starting to make it his own. Either way, it was a little disconcerting, though I took great pains not to show my discomfort. He was already self-conscious enough that I had no intention of adding my issues to the mix. Besides, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

“Okay. What’s the other?”

“I know the area, and it’s not far from a Dead Zone where I can put some of my training to work,” I said. As far as I knew, there were two parts to any training regimen. The first was simple – just repetition of exercises meant to increase a person’s attributes or familiarize them with a skill. The second part came from putting that training to use in real situations. That was where the Dead Zone would come in.

They were well known for harboring powerful creatures, including Wildlings. And if I outgrew the one where I’d encountered my first Rift, then I could always head toward the crater where I’d nearly been killed by a horde of irradiated Wildlings. It would feel nice to wipe them from the face of the Earth while getting some much-needed training in.

But just as prominent as having a place to hunt was the fact that Mobile held a certain degree of nostalgia for me. It was there that I’d learned to separate myself from everyone else, at least in terms of power. But I’d also made my first real friends, too. I’d spent most of my life in Nova City, but the Dew Drop Inn was my first home.

And now that everything was on the verge of changing again, I desperately wanted to go back.

Thankfully, Patrick didn’t have any issues with that. For his part, he only needed somewhere to set up shop, and he would be happy enough. Sure, having some mutated and monstrous wildlife on which to test his creations was nice, but he wasn’t as dedicated to raw advancement as I was.

And that was okay.

He could play his role well enough, and that was all that mattered. Still, I hoped he wouldn’t neglect his combat abilities altogether. There was still a war coming, and we were destined to find ourselves right in the thick of things.

Before we got going, though, we spent the night in Montreal’s dock, where we pretended that we didn’t have the weight of the world on our shoulders. And it was nice. Better than that, if I’m honest. The only thing keeping it from being perfect was the knowledge that it was only temporary. That simple fact cast a pall over the evening, but it also gave it an urgency that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.

But soon enough, we fell asleep in one another’s arms. That night, I dreamed of drowning. Nothing else. Just being stuck in the middle of an endless sea. No surface. No seabed. Just the crushing expanse of water.

I didn’t need to be a psychologist to understand the meaning behind it, but after waking the next morning, I pushed it all out of my mind. I had other issues that demanded my focus, and I had no interest in examining the pressure bearing down on me.

After sharing a breakfast of bacon and eggs, we were on our way back to where everything had all started. The trip wasn’t nearly as long as the distance would have implied, and we reached familiar territory before nightfall.

“Set it down in what’s left of the city? Or do you want to land further out and go in on foot?” he asked as we hovered in place.

“Land first. I want to absorb my new skills, arrange my arsenal, then check things out from the ground,” I stated. “If it’s clear, I’ll find an appropriate place to set up. Then, I’ll guide you in.”

“Sounds good.”

It was telling that he didn’t even offer to come. I was well aware that he wanted to protect me just as much as I wanted to do the same for him, but he knew that he would only slow me down. More than that, he trusted me to take care of myself just like I’d had to force myself to trust him to do the same.

After that, Patrick found an open field where he landed the Leviathan. Then, we both went our separate ways. While he headed to the cargo bay to catalogue and organize the parts he’d bought in the Bazaar, I retreated into my training room. But I wasn’t there to train with my Mistrunning program. Instead, I settled down and retrieved the skill crystals from my arsenal implant.

Two of them – [Shielding] and [Recovery] – I set aside, but I set three others in front of me. The first one I absorbed was [Aura Manipulation]. Next, I pressed the crystal for [Navigation] to the back of my neck and let it dissolve into my Nexus Implant. And finally, I absorbed [Multi-Mind]. I did them all in quick succession, which was a mistake.

Unlike the first time I’d absorbed a skill, the effect of my new skills were immediate and briefly overwhelming. Suddenly, I was more aware of Mist – both ambient and the nanites concentrated across every inch of the ship – and that sudden increase definitely threw me for a loop.

It wasn’t so bad though, chiefly because I had grown progressively more accustomed to sensing the Mist. However, when that was accompanied by my mind suddenly splitting in two separate awarenesses, it became more than I could bear. I let out a gasp and very nearly lost consciousness as my brain tried to make sense of the disparate threads of thought.

I squeezed my eyes shut and threw every ounce of focus I could at the problem, which was saying quite a lot. I’d spent years training my cognition, and that practice certainly paid off as I wrangled my two minds into submission.

Still, that wasn’t to say that it wasn’t a long, drawn-out process. It was. Hours passed as I slowly acclimated to the twin streams of thought. However, I was far too stubborn to give in, and eventually, I managed the feat.

Once I had things under control, I navigated through my interface’s menus and brought up my status:

I couldn’t deny that I was very pleased with how the skills had been integrated into my system. For one, I hadn’t expected the modifiers associated with each new skill. For [Navigation], I’d gained a full fifty-percent modifier to my spatial awareness. Already, I felt more cognizant of my surroundings, and I hadn’t even had the chance to acclimate to the modifier. Surely, once I did, it would be even more powerful.

I probably shouldn’t have been surprised to see a twenty-five percent increase to my cognition associated with [Multi-Mind]. Without that, a normal person who absorbed the skill would have been too overwhelmed to function. I wasn’t nearly as affected by it – likely due to my high Mind attribute – but it was still a welcome addition to my already-stacked modifiers.

For [Aura Manipulation], I’d gotten a fifty-percent increase to my aura strength, though aside from a line on my status, I wasn’t sure what the effect really was. I certainly didn’t feel any different, but I supposed that might change once I had a chance to train with it. Until then, it would probably remain mostly inert.

Other than that, the rest of my status looked much the same as it had before the trip to the Bazaar. My attributes had almost reached their maximum, but now that I’d regained three skills, my potential was much, much higher. I hoped to leverage that to my advantage via copious training. I knew that potential wasn’t just the limit of a person’s attributes. It was that, sure. But the larger the gap between a person’s potential and their current attributes meant faster progression as well. So, given that I now had a pretty good ways to go before reaching my potential, I expected to make rapid gains in my attributes.

I was also sure that I would need that going forward if we were going to survive.

I did notice that even after three months and running a Rift that I’d barely moved the needle on my progress through the level, though. Two-percent. That was it. Clearly, it was going to take something monumental to take me past level seventy-five, but given what it had taken to get that far, that should have been expected.

Still, it was a little disappointing.

As far as my other skills were concerned, I’d made some progress, even reaching Tier-1 in [Warfare] and [Mist-Infused Body], gaining some increases to my modifiers in the process.  I hadn’t really tested anything out, but I hoped that increased power would come in handy.

After looking over my basic status, I moved on to the individual skill trees. First up was [Warfare]:

Three of those branches were fairly self-explanatory, especially when it came to advancing their tiers. However, I still wasn’t sure how to affect the progress of the Command branch. I’d made some headway, but it had yet to narrow down the reasons why. I hoped to make some progress in that arena, because abilities like Planetary Defense and Orbital Strike certainly sounded useful.

Otherwise, I’d picked up some extra modifiers in damage and endurance, though I hadn’t really felt any differences. That was how those modifiers tended to work, though. By this point, adding an extra twenty-five percent damage didn’t represent much in relation to the total modifiers from all the skills that had evolved into [Warfare].

[Espionage] had experienced decidedly less progression, though I was pleased to see that the Mist Manipulation branch had reached Tier-1. I could only hope that things would go a lot more quickly once I could devote all my time and energy toward training. On the one hand, nine months seemed like a long time. I only had to think back to after I’d first gained my Nexus Implant to remember how much progress I could make in that span. However, on the other hand, I knew that it was far too little time to accomplish all my goals.

Still, even if I managed to reach those standards, I’d only move on to the next challenge. That was my curse – I couldn’t just rest. I always needed to be working toward something. But curse or not, it was also my largest advantage.

After I’d finished absorbing my new skills, I spent some time arranging my weapons in my arsenal implant. It could now hold five weapons, so I threw the Stringer in the first, followed by the ADS, Emperor, and the HIRC. I finished it off with the BMAP; despite the additions, the weapon still served a purpose, and I didn’t intend to leave it behind.

I admit that I was a little sad to leave the R-14 and Pulsar behind. Both had served me well, but my time in the Rift had driven home just how outdated they were. Even with my modifiers, they were just incapable of packing the sort of punch I’d need to dispatch the powerful enemies I was sure to make.

I did keep the nano-bladed sword, though I shifted it into one of the generic slots in my arsenal implant. It was just small enough that I could pull it out with only a little Mist expenditure. The Interdiction Blade, I sheathed on my back. Of course, I also kept Ferdinand II holstered at my hip. He wasn’t any more powerful than the weapons I’d replaced, but the pistol had a few advantages they didn’t – chiefly that he could fire a wide variety of ammunition. Much like the BMAP, Ferdinand II served a wide variety of purposes, and with the right ammunition – which I’d bought from Gala – he could still pack quite a punch.

Besides, I was more nostalgic for that weapon than any other.

Thus armed, I turned my attention to my infiltration suit and my subdermal armor. The infiltration suit was still the best of its kind, so I couldn’t replace it. The armor, on the other hand, had received a new upgrade module that increased its kinetic absorption, meaning that it would take a lot more force to penetrate. And considering that it was my last line of defense before things started ripping me to pieces, that was an attractive upgrade.

Once I’d gotten all of that sorted, I left the room behind. As I passed through cargo bay on my way out, I bade farewell to Patrick – who was predictably tinkering with his armor – before leaving through one of the side doors.

The humidity hit me like a brick wall, bringing with it a wave of nostalgia. As I processed that, I got the first taste of how useful Split Mind could be. One strand of thought latched onto Observation, keeping track of everything around me, while the other handled my {Mist Warden} senses. I could see everything all at once, which was why I wasn’t even surprised when an oversized cougar leaped out at me.

I whipped the Interdiction Blade out of it sheath, and in the same motion, swept it through the animal’s neck. I felt almost no resistance as I stepped aside to avoid the creature’s momentum.

Even two separate thumps announced the fall of both parts of the cougar’s body, I realized that I’d never lost track of my surroundings.

“I’m going to like this,” I said to myself before setting off toward one of the roads I knew was in the area. When I reached it, I mounted the bike and set off toward the only real home I’d ever known.