Mistrunner 4 - Chapter 22 - Honing Skills (Patreon)

Some people have a talent for battle. All those split-second decisions just come naturally to them. Others have a knack for training. It’s a combination of willingness to push themselves to the limit, over and over again, and the willpower to keep at it long after others would have given up. Mira has both, which, given her other talents, makes her an absolute monster when it comes to progression.

Alistaris Kargat

The next three months passed without much in the way of variation, and I was once again reminded of my first stint in Mobile. There, I’d laid the groundwork for so much of what I would become. Certainly, the training itself was important, but the habits fostered by the routine foisted upon me was even more critical to my current situation. Back then, I learned to work. To push myself far past the point where other people would have fallen by the wayside. I was forced to realize that limits were as much about mindset as about physical endurance. And those lessons continued to apply as I pushed further and further into territory no one else on Earth had ever seen.

My uncle was powerful. I knew that, and his reputation supported that characterization. However, I suspected that, by the end of that second three-month period, I had surpassed him, and by no small degree.

“What are you thinking about?” asked Patrick, looking up from where he’d had his tools buried in an arm he’d detached from his armor. Throughout our time in Mobile, he’d been tinkering with his creation to the point where he’d replaced more parts than remained from the old version. In addition, he’d thoroughly reworked his arsenal, and I was eager to see how much devastation he could bring to bear.

I let out a slow exhale, then leaned my head against the cargo bay’s bulkhead. I let four threads of thought – I’d recently upgraded [Multi-Mind] – go silent. One had been focused on constantly flaring Mist Shield, which was the ability that had come with [Shielding], while another had been cycling through a new Mind training program I’d bought from Gala. The other two strains of thought were concentrated on building a new series of grenades. Well, one of them was, at least. The other had strayed into thoughts of my uncle.

The sudden stillness in my mind was even more distracting than when it was busy.

I opened my eyes, then asked, “What makes you think I was thinking about anything? I’m training.”

“Because your nose scrunches up when you’re lost in thought,” he said, gesturing with a tiny wrench. He grinned. “It’s cute.”

“I was also working.”

“That’s a different nose scrunch,” he said.

“There can’t be that many nose scrunches.”

“Seventeen last time I counted,” he said without hesitation. “Though admittedly, three of those are variations on the concentration nose scrunch.”

“That’s…a lot of nose scrunches,” I muttered, baffled that he would pay so much attention to such a minute expression. Suddenly, I felt a little self-conscious about it.

“That’s a new one,” he said. “What’s that one mean?”

I looked away, forcing the expression from my face. “Shut up,” I said.

“Oh. Judging by your blush, I’m guessing embarrassment. Or is it self-consciousness?”

“I said shut up.”

“You still didn’t answer me,” he stated. “What were you thinking about?”

Eager to move on from any line of discussion focused on my expressions, I said, “I don’t know. Just my uncle. He spent almost century fighting and getting stronger, but I think I’m already past him now, and I’ve only had my Nexus Implant for a little less than a decade. It seems kind of surreal. I mean, pretty much everyone acknowledged that he was one of the strongest people around, right? And everything I saw from him supported that. But in comparison, I’m probably a lot stronger than he was when he died.”

“What are your stats up to, now?”

I looked at my status:

I had made fantastic progress, especially considering that I’d already taken [Aura Manipulation] to Tier-5. It helped that I could focus on multiple tasks at once; it wasn’t a one-to-one multiplier in terms of rate of progress, but it definitely sped things up. Barely an hour went by that at least two of my strains of thought weren’t focused on pushing my abilities or skills forward. Even when I was working on my physical training or weapons’ progression, I was always working on something else.

And it showed.

“My attributes are creeping closer to the five-hundred mark,” I said. “Gala said that was a big one. She said that only a fraction of a percent of people ever approach that, and even those are usually focused on only one attribute. The fact that I’m getting there with all three is a big deal. According to her, at least.”

She’d once joked about me needing five-hundred Constitution to wield the best blades in the universe, but I’d since discovered that that was usually only achievable with dedicated cybernetics or armor suits like Patrick’s. Those usually came with a significant cost – in terms of credits as well as to the user’s body – so I knew I was far ahead of almost anyone I was likely to meet.

Except the aliens, and whatever technology they might have at their disposal. I felt fairly sure I could stand up to just about anyone, but I was very aware of just how little I knew about the universe. For all I knew, there were people out there who were twice as strong as me.

“Damn. You’re shooting up there,” he said. “And here I was happy about clearing seventy-five in Constitution and Mist. If I could just get to a hundred, I could really boost the armor.”

That was the chief limiter for the armor. It put quite a strain on his body, and though much of that was mitigated by his skills and modifiers, it was still what was holding him back. I couldn’t help but regard that as a silver lining, though. If there were no limitations on that kind of thing, then any mook could just buy the best armor and match the results of my hard work.

I’d even asked Gala about getting a mech suit of my own, but she claimed that the materials necessary to make something equivalent to my attributes would be almost impossible to find. And if they were available, they would be used for something more important than boosting a single warrior.

But on the other end of that spectrum, I wanted Patrick to be as sturdy as possible. I’d already come close to losing him once, and I wasn’t eager to repeat that experience. Thankfully, his class {Combat Engineer} gave him a significant advantage in that his cybernetics – which included his armor – were far more effective for him than they would be for most. He was a little cagey about the actual percentages, but I’d seen enough to suspect that, in his armor, his effective Constitution was at least tripled. Unfortunately, it didn’t affect his Mist reserves or his Mind, but then again, he didn’t really need those attributes as much as I did.

“How are your individual skills progressing?” he asked.

“Pretty well. I’m still barely progressing in that Command branch,” I said. Indeed, the fourth branch of my [Warfare] tree was still stuck at Tier-0. I suspected that it was because I wasn’t actually exercising it. By comparison, my others had progressed nicely, and I’d even picked up a couple of new abilities. I was still trying to integrate them into my toolkit, but trying to remember to use my glut of abilities was always going to be a struggle. I just had so many that, even with four threads of thought working on it, I often forgot some of them even existed. “You?”

He beamed. “I’m rolling through tiers,” he said. “It’s insane how much more I can take with that armor.”

Patrick had integrated quite a bit of hunting into his routine, even taking the Leviathan on a few excursions alone. That was quite a change, considering that, before, he’d actively avoided combat. Not surprising, given how comparatively vulnerable he had been, but the change was definitely a nice change of pace.

Obviously, that had borne fruit. He still wasn’t a particularly high level, but that was mostly because he had no way of mass killing. It had taken me millions of kills to reach my level, so it wasn’t surprising that the pace of his progression was a lot slower than mine. Still, he’d grown, and that was all either of us could ask for.

But that wasn’t really what was on my mind.

We only had a few more months before the world changed, and I wasn’t sure whether or not either of us – let alone the rest of the world – was going to survive what was coming.

“Do you think we’ve got a chance?” I asked.

“I do,” he stated. “And if it looks like things are spiraling out of control, we’ll just leave. Once the quarantine is lifted, we can get out of here.”

“But what about everyone else?”

“We’ll try to save them, but if we can’t…”

That had been our deal. Originally, Patrick had been all for escaping Earth as soon as the Integration dawned. By comparison, I wanted to stay and fight. The compromise was that we’d cut and run the moment things started looking dire.

We both knew that would never happen, though. Neither of us was good at quitting, after all.

A long silence stretched between us before, finally, we went back to our respective tasks. I focused on using [Shielding] as well as Mist Authority, while Patrick reattached the arm he’d removed from his armor. Like that, we remained for the next few hours until the monotony of training was broken by Alistaris, who’d contacted me via an unsecured connection.

“Hold on,” I said before using Secure Connection. Once it took hold, I said, “What’s up, Al?”

“Need you persist in calling me that? My name is Alistaris Kargat. You may use either of those names. Conversely, my subordinates also call me General.”

“Not your subordinate, Al. At best, I’m a mercenary. At worst, I’m somebody who owes you a couple of favors.”

He let out a long-suffering sigh. “Very well. One of those favors has come due,” he said. “I need you to meet me at the following coordinates tomorrow afternoon.”

He sent me a message containing said coordinates. Using my Map, I established that they led to a location half a continent away and nestled in a range of truly impressive mountains.

“What’s going on?”

“We’re going to fire the first shots in the impending war,” he stated. “I won’t say more over any connection, even a secure one. This is important, Miss Braddock. I trust you will take it seriously.”

“When do I not take things seriously?” I asked, feigning innocence.

Alistaris did not answer that. Instead, he said, “Tomorrow afternoon. I will see you then.”

After that, he cut the connection.

“What?” Patrick asked, obviously having noticed something in my expression. I could hide those silent conversations from most people, but not from the person who knew me better than anyone else.

“Our gnomish friend just called. Apparently, we’ve been summoned.”

Then, I sent him the coordinates. He took one look at them, then said, “We should probably get going sooner rather than later. It’s going to take most of the night to reach the area, and I’m sure you’re going to want to scout things out before you walk into any meeting.”

“We probably need to discuss strategy, too.”

“For a meeting?”

“Al said we’re about to start the war,” I said. “That means we’re probably not coming back here anytime soon. More importantly, we need to be ready for whatever ‘starting the war’ really means.”

Presumably, it would involve assaulting locations held by the aliens, but there was no way to be sure until Alistaris revealed the scope of the mission. Moreover, I felt entitled to know exactly what we could expect afterwards, because I wasn’t so naïve as to assume he’d let us just go back to training. Once the war started – which was coming sooner rather than later – I didn’t expect it to end until we were dead, or the aliens had been repelled.

“So, it’s starting.”

“I think so.”

“Do you think we’re ready?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I have no idea,” I answered. I knew I was much stronger than I’d ever been. The last six months of training had been well spent, and for both of us. However, without more information on what was coming, there was no way to know if we were positioned to win the coming war. We could just as easily have been delusional.

Judging by how all the aliens in the Bazaar had reacted to the coming Integration, that seemed likely. That, as much as anything else, twisted my stomach into knots of anxiety. I forced myself to ignore it, offering Patrick a smile as I said, “Think about it, though. We could win this thing and be free, right? Then, we can go off and explore the universe without worrying about leaving a dead world behind.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It might just be,” I said.

“Somehow, I doubt that. But then again, you’ll probably kill them all by accident, right?” he joked.

“That was one time.”

“Kind of twice,” he said. “Or did you forget the moon incident?”

“That was only half accident. I wanted to blow them up.”

“The crater you left behind is visible from everyone on Earth,” he stated. “It’s at least six-hundred miles wide.”

“I overdid it a little.”

“A little?”

“Okay, a lot. But I learned my lesson. Don’t mix unknown Mist-infused materials with high explosives. Or don’t do it unless you want to blow a hole in a moon. Or a small planet. Earth would probably be fine, though. Mostly.”

“That’s not as reassuring as I think you think it is.”

I shrugged. “Best I can do.”

After that, we went our separate ways as we gathered our things. Without the restrictive bands I used during my workouts, collecting my weight set was incredibly easy. The only limiter was how awkward the burden ended up being. Still, I managed it well enough, depositing everything in the Leviathan’s cargo hold.

Once everything had been piled into that space, Patrick put it away in his spatial storage. One of the upgrades for the Leviathan we’d recently bought was a portable Storage Node that allowed Patrick to access his spatial storage without using his own Mist. In addition to that, we’d upgraded the cannons as well as installed a new Mist shield generator that would hopefully protect us from whatever the aliens could throw at us.

When we’d put everything away, I found myself standing before the still-open cargo hatch and looking down on Mobile as the Leviathan lifted into the air. The city still held some nostalgia, but it wasn’t nearly as powerful as it had been. During the past six months, I’d come to realize that the place in my memory was gone, and now only ruins remained.

With a sigh, I hit the button to close the hatch, then headed to the cockpit where Patrick was seated.

“Say your goodbyes?” he asked without looking away from his instruments.

“Unnecessary,” I said. “We’ll be back one day. And maybe we’ll rebuild it even better than before.”

“Maybe,” was his noncommittal response.

With that, he hit the accelerator, and the Leviathan jumped forward. Soon enough, we’d cross the continent, meet with Alistaris, and learn his plan for repelling the alien poised to invade the moment the quarantine was lifted.