On the battlements, Xavier looked between Queen Alastea and Adviser Kalren. They spoke politely to each other, but there was an undercurrent to their words. If anything, it looked more like they were bickering with one another. Not like an old married couple—no, definitely not. But it was clear that this man had once been her mentor, and now she was his queen. Their relationship, and the roles they played in each others lives, had changed much over the years.
Finally, the queen let out a sigh. “Fine, Kalren. You may stay. However, if I perceive that at any point you are in even the smallest amount of danger, I will order you to step through that portal. Or if there is any danger of the Endless Horde getting to that portal and identifying where it leads…”
“I won’t let that happen,” Xavier said. “Trust me, Queen Alastea, your people will be safe.”
Queen Alastea looked over at Xavier, a small smirk forming on her lips. “If I am to call you Xavier, then perhaps you should call me Kiralla.”
Kalren’s eyebrows shot to the top of his forehead as he peered at his queen. Though the flicker of emotion did not last long. His eyebrows were back in a neutral position by the time the queen—Kiralla—was looking at him again.
“Kiralla.” Xavier nodded at the woman. “I think I can manage that.” Once the words had fallen from his mouth he knew how foolish they sounded. Of course he could manage to call the woman by her damned name.
Was giving me her first name some form of flirting?
He shook that from his head and looked at the adviser. “What was this you said about a secondary core? I’ve never heard of that before.”
Kalren chuckled. “It is remarkable, the things you are capable of despite your lack of knowledge. Please do not take me seeing the humour in it as offensive.”
Xavier gave a thin smile. “Not at all.”
Kalren cleared his throat. “A secondary core is the next step you will need to take on your journey to E Grade. However, there is much you will need to accomplish before we can begin that step.” He rubbed his hands together. “First, you must cycle Spirit Energy through your core.”
Xavier dipped his head, stopping himself from sighing. He wanted the man to tell him more, but he also didn’t want to waste time asking questions he would get answers to later. “All right. What do I have to do?”
For the next ten minutes, Kalren had Xavier sitting on the cold stone floor of the battlements, deep in meditation, observing his core. The man had instructed him to expend some of his Spirit Energy, so Xavier created some Lesser Spirit Coins and deposited them into his Storage Ring.
“Now that you have fallen into a deep rhythm of meditation, you should be able to see your core. Notice the Spirit Energy entering it naturally. It will take you some time to see the flow of the energy as it enters through your lines. Do not be ashamed if it takes you a few days—”
“I feel it,” Xavier said, tilting his head to the side. His reserve was filling up so rapidly it felt as though it was difficult not to see it, though he’d never actually observed it before. I just didn’t know what to look for.
Kalren was silent for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. “You… you see it? Are you sure?”
Xavier nodded.
“Ah, good. Good.”
Kalren’s surprise was clear. Xavier didn’t need to open his eyes and look at the man to see that. Xavier, on the other hand, wasn’t all that surprised that he had discovered it so quickly. He didn’t think it was because he was particularly gifted—it was just the fact that his Spirit attribute was almost at 500 points.
How could he not be able to do something like this?
“What do I do next?”
“Well, if you indeed are able to see the energy entering you, now you must learn how to manipulate it. The reason I had you expend Spirit Energy from your core was so that it would be easy for you to identify one part of the cycle—the Spirit Energy merging with your reserve. That is always the first step, and usually takes quite a bit longer.”
Xavier waited for the man to elaborate, interested to learn exactly how he was supposed to manipulate the energy. He’d already learnt how to do that when he’d learnt the Aura-Control skill. Though he supposed that must be different to this. “Cycle” made it sound as though the energy would rotate somehow, and the only thing he was truly able to do was control how quickly the energy was burned in his core, decreasing or increasing the strength of his aura.
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“Now that you have seen the way Spirit Energy enters your core, observing the lines that it follows through your body, you must pull it from your core and have it circle back around those lines.”
Xavier frowned. He wanted to ask why, but from all the mentor-student media he’d ever digested in his life, he knew the answer he received would likely be unsatisfying—something along the lines of because that is what must be done. Still, he was curious as to the reason for doing such a thing, but he kept that curiosity inside. The information that the adviser had given him about a secondary core still dangled over his head, and he knew that he would only have so much time to receive the man’s instruction.
Xavier was confident he would easily be able to deal with the first ten or twenty waves without really breaking a sweat. He was confident he would be able to wipe out a hell of a lot more than that—wave 100 had a nice ring to it. What he wasn’t confident about was how long those waves would take him to complete.
The queen had informed him that each wave would begin their charge after an hour, whether or not the previous wave had been dealt with. It was inevitable that eventually, as the waves became progressively more difficult, Xavier would reach something that he couldn’t deal with.
Though he did know he would be much stronger by then, considering how many levels and rank-ups he was going to gain.
So Xavier kept his questions to himself and listened to the man’s instruction as attentively as he could. And though the first part of the exercise had been incredibly easy for him to grasp, this second part—pulling the Spirit Energy back out of his core without the use of a spell or through the creation of Lesser Spirit Coins—was turning out to be incredibly difficult.
Before he knew it, the war drums were beating again, and another wave of Denizens and beasts charged toward Queen Alastea’s castle. Horns blew, shouts sounded and howls filled the air. A breeze rolled in, and his nose crinkled, registering the scent of not only sweat, but of blood and viscera that had been dispersed on the battlefield during the last two waves. Xavier had an awfully clinical and practical thought, wondering just how littered the space outside the walls would soon become with the dead, and whether they would need to be cleaning away the corpses. He no longer bothered gathering them into his Storage Ring—it simply wasn’t a very good use of his time any longer.
Xavier rose from where he sat cross-legged on the stone and leapt over the parapet once more.
The third wave comprised of level 12 enemies. Again, they posed no difficulty to Xavier. He was tempted to simply blast them with Soul Strike—he could pack 250 souls into a single one now—but he didn’t wish to grow complacent. If he were going to last here for the latter waves, he would need to strengthen everything, not just his favourite spell.
So, once more, he plunged himself back into the fray. Using Soul Block liberally, he tore through the nearby enemies with spirit-infused melee attacks. Soultaker’s blade sheared through their bodies, leaving the battlefield riddled with beasts and Denizens alike sliced neatly in two. Legs, arms and heads fell to the dirt as his blade cleaved through the mess of enemies. The annoyance at having to deal with another wave quickly dissipated as the excitement of the fight flowed through him and he harvested one soul after another.
He felt more fluid than before. His skill with his scythe-staff was increasing tremendously fast. Soul Block didn’t seem any stronger for all the ranks it had gained, but he knew that was simply because he wasn’t facing enemies strong enough to actually harm him. That could also be why it wasn’t growing through the ranks terribly quickly despite his rapid use of the spell.
Once again, Xavier kept a close eye on the enemies at the rear of the castle. When they neared the moat, he fired off a Soul Strike infused with 150 souls and took half the wave out all at once. Though he didn’t wish to grow complacent, when he realised the strength—or rather, weakness—of the enemies was making it more difficult to acquire ranks in his skills, he figured he could focus on that in latter waves more effectively.
He waited until the end of the wave to read the skill and spell notifications that had popped up, digesting them all at once, finding Soul Block had gained two more ranks, with Soul Harden, Soul Harvest and Spirit Infusion each gaining one, and his Scythe-Staff Mastery getting to the next rank as well.
Xavier returned to the battlements to take instruction from Kalren, and sometimes even from the queen herself. Once more he struggled with the seemingly simple task of manipulating his Spirit Energy. Each minute that past felt like an entire hour as he was stuck in deep meditation, trying to yank the energy free of his core and drag it through the lines in his body. He was sure it was his Willpower stat that helped him keep focused. If it wasn’t so high, he probably would have found himself getting frustrated by his lack of progress, as by the time the fourth wave was readying its charge he hadn’t so much as made the Spirit Energy budge.
This wasn’t helped by the fact that Kalren seemed to have a little smirk on his face, apparently taking some pleasure in the knowledge that Xavier was struggling with this task. Though Xavier figured he couldn’t blame the man. He’d always been frustrated by people who didn’t struggle with a skill. There was a perverse kind of pleasure, watching someone talented deal with difficulty—seeing that they too were merely human.
He tore through the fourth wave with blade and spells equally, gaining a few more ranks here and there, but ensuring it didn’t take him near as long as the other two waves. After fifteen minutes, the wave had been defeated and he’d gained another level.
Xavier grinned when he looked at his stats. He didn’t need to contemplate where he would spend his 20 free points.
It was time to see if having 500 points in Spirit would break him through another attribute threshold.