Aaron awoke slowly, the air still feeling almost impossibly heavy with energy. He struggled into a sitting position as the air pressed him back down towards the floor. His vessel was almost numb with agony, and his pathways felt rubbed raw. His muscles and bones ached and his thoughts felt muddled and slow.
“This is starting to become an annoying trend” he muttered to himself before sinking into his internal space. The usually simple action felt difficult and unwieldy, both his body and mind worn down to nubs by the recent strain.
He felt that his network had undergone another change, the entirety of his mind and body felt further improved in every way he could name and a few he felt but couldn’t quite place. His pathways were stronger and slightly but noticeably larger. The increase in vessel size was vastly less this time, only a roughly seventy-five percent increase. He swiftly reduced the pressure on his vessel by spinning up his spiral once more, restoring also his helical pathway structure. His newly strengthened pathways held up surprisingly well against the ever increasing pressure caused by the tightening coils of his helical structure.
Done examining and resetting himself, Aaron opened his eyes to see his new surroundings. He sat in the center of a circular structure, identical to the one in the basement chamber. This structure sat in what appeared to be a valley, sat upon a worn stone dais. Verdant green grass grew across the valley floor, giving way to unnaturally tall trees as the land began to rise; oaks, birches, and aspens between one and two hundred feet tall. The sun appeared to just rise in the direction he presumed to be east. His heart sank as he realized that this structure was no longer operable, the symbols rent by spider webbing cracks, many of the pedestals crumbling.
“I’m not going home, eh?” He muttered, deep sadness shining in the depths of his eyes.
He sat, staring into the distance for a full hour, before shaking himself from his melancholy. He stood and made his way towards the rise to what he took to be north, based on the position of the morning sun. Another hour’s worth of walking saw him mere feet from the top of the rise. Topping the rise and staring down the tree coated slope beneath him, Aaron realized that the structure was located not in a valley, but instead a caldera. Stopping to consider his options for several moments, he saw nothing for it but to head off into the forest.
Before leaving, he realized that he may need to find this structure again. Stopping to ponder a solution, he thought of the connection he felt to the storage rings in his travel bag. He used one of the swords in his possession to carve a small divot into a nearby tree, finding that the swords could not even scratch the bark in its unpowered state. Even powered it took him a half hour of carving to make a slit in the tree large enough to fit one of the lesser spatial rings. That accomplished, he set off into the vast primordial forest.
Aaron spent the next several hours trekking northward through the primordial forest. There were no visible underbrush plants beneath the thick canopy of the enormous tree, each at least seventy five feet thick in the trunk. However, the spaces between the trees were littered with herbs akin to the ones in his spatial ring. The herbs were vigorously alive and visually stunning, coming in a plethora of brilliant colors. Some emitted scorching heat, others were surrounded by a thin dusting of snow, and yet others gleamed as if they were metal, yet were as soft and supple as any other plant. There appeared to be no native plants other than the trees and herbs, no apparent shrubs or ferns.
About three hours into his trek, Aaron was struck by an immediate, heart-clenching sense of danger. He dove forward, feeling several burning lines rip across his back. Following through into a roll, he rolled to his feet facing his enemy. He found himself facing a tiger the size of a sedan, powerfully muscled and five and a half feet at the shoulder, with white fur and indigo stripes.
The beast, realizing that its ambush had failed, roared in fury. Aaron leaped backward, avoiding the beast as it lunged forward and attempted to bite through his ribs. Having no time to retrieve a weapon from his spatial ring, he set himself and drove his elbow forward into the beast’s nose. Surprised by the stinging ache in the sensitive organ, the beast flinched backward. Even further enraged that this puny creature would dare to strike it, the beast’s eyes reddened. The next several minutes were a blurred mess of growls, roars, and splattering blood. Aaron frantically dodged the creature’s vicious swipes, new wounds appeared across his body, some thin and shallow, others deep and grievous.
Swaying from blood loss, Aaron stared the beast dead in the eyes. The edges of his vision began to waver as the beast growled deep in its throat. Then driven by his desire to live and let loose by his wavering consciousness, Aaron’s energy began to react.
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The signals in his nerves began to expand, crackling arcs of electric power bleeding into his pathways. The lustrous metallic white of his energy quickly shifted to a bright neon yellow. The newly colored energy rapidly sped up, causing the helical angle, already tightened by the greater weight of the energy in the air, to tighten even further until there was less than a millimeter between each coil. His pathways now appeared more like a tightly wound cord of dual toned string, rather than a helix.
The speed and force of the energy in his pathways drove threads of luminous yellow out into his body. Every cell became filled with crackling electric power, rapidly heating every square inch of his body. As his body was cleansed of impurities, his bodily state increased even further. The impurities, driven out of his body, promptly evaporated off of his scorching skin. The steam rising off of his body became thick and black, burned so thoroughly that it bore no scent. His mind drifted in an exhausted lassitude, his body driven by instinct alone.
While this took some time to describe, it occurred in a mere handful of heartbeats. Aaron dipped under the beast’s next swipe, launching a strike at the beast's leading shoulder. The blow forced a blast of shock in the beast’s muscles and nerves, the shuddering muscles driving the creature off balance. Aaron struck as the beast stumbled, crouching and landing a blow against the knee of the beast’s opposite foreleg. The beast began to fall forward as it’s leg spasmed and collapsed. He spun back from the return force, his elbow crashing into the side of the beast’s skull behind its right eye as it fell. The electric discharge from his blow rushed into the beast’s brain, dealing horrific damage and muddling the creature's mind. Aaron rose to his full height as the ground shuddered from the beast’s landing. He stepped to the side and drove both of his fists down in a vicious hammer blow. The strike landed on the creature’s spine, just behind the beast's massive head. The wild electricity severed the beast’s spinal column, it’s vertebrae cracking as the spinal fluid evaporated. The beast shuddered for several seconds, then its eyes darkened as it lay still.
Aaron’s mind slowly processed that the beast was no longer a threat. His mouth lifted up into a tired smile, before twisting into a grimace as his body was wracked with indescribable agony. He collapsed to his knees as his shredded muscles and cracked bones lost all strength. His vision began to darken at the edges as he slumped back against the beast’s skull. The last thing he saw as the black veil of unconsciousness overcame him was a man striding around a nearby tree.
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Deng Fang had been attracted by the roar of a beast. He hoped that perhaps its corpse would be worth enough to redeem this nightmare of a trip. The Great Eastern Wood was known both for great danger and the possibility of vast wealth. Deng Fang was a solo mercenary, living on the collection and sale of both medicinal herbs and beast parts.
This trip to the Great Eastern Wood had consumed most of his remaining funds. He had hoped to return with a reasonable haul, but so far he had seen only mundane animals not worth the time to hunt and beasts far too powerful for him to face. He had retrieved a reasonable collection of common herbs, unfortunately, all of the truly valuable plants were guarded by mighty beasts. The beasts defended the herbs for their own personal consumption when they matured.
Deng Fang slowly came upon the small clearing from downwind in an attempt to ambush the beast. He slowed to a stop as the clearing opened up before him. He saw a bloodied man in the strangest attire he had ever seen facing off against a Cloud Eating Tiger. The man was covered in wounds, while the beast merely seemed to be mildly depleted of qi.
Deng Fang settled in to strike the beast once it had slain the stranger.
Suddenly, the swaying man began to shudder, black smoke rising from his reddening flesh as bolts of lightning began dancing across his flesh. Deng Fang watched in stunned disbelief as the bloodied man swiftly struck down the beast in a handful of blows.
The man, clearly drained by his life preserving technique, slumped down to sit against the tiger's corpse. Deng Fang stepped forward into the clearing, watching the man’s nearly vacant eyes slowly latch onto him. The man attempted to struggle to his feet for a moment, before he slumped back down, his eyes closing. He slipped the tiger’s corpse into one of the many spatial rings he had hanging from his belt, specifically for beast corpses. He then lifted the strange man onto his shoulders and set off for his nearby campsite.
Several hours later Deng Fang found himself sitting in his camp, set in an hidden valley huddled inside a plateau of sheer stone. Accessible only by a stone passage with a deceptively small entrance which he had thoroughly trapped with alarm and illusion arrays.
Deng Fang sat and wondered about the strange man who had killed a beast he didn’t think he could have bested. The man wore strange clothing made of a material he had never seen before. The stranger was clearly a cultivator, wearing what appeared to be a high class spatial ring. Laying next to the fire, the man remained an enigma with no clear answer. He had provided the stranger with his single high grade healing pill. The man had not only received grievous wounds from the beast, but had also been severely damaged by his own technique. Deng Fang dearly wished to speak with the stranger when he awoke. Three days passed before he woke.