Kal finally drank the potion and watched his vital energy work much harder to repair his wounds. The broken arm was probably the most interesting as he could see thicker threads of vital energy wrap around the bones of his forearm and slowly straighten it back into place. He couldn't wait for when Dalen could make something like that. He sat up and stretched his repaired arm and ribs. One resource down, two to go. Stamina seemed simple enough, he might even be able to perceive during today's training if he worked hard enough judging by how fast he found his vital energy. But for finding his mystic energy Kal really had no idea if it was possible. According to Melisia, the core is the source of a mortal's mana which made Kal wonder how the core was formed in the first place if it required a source of mana to manifest. It wasn’t something that had ever truly been investigated, since normally anybody whose core was destroyed would normally die. He decided he would concentrate on stamina, for now, any progress was good progress.
Kal climbed to his feet just in time to see the prick serf Julin and his gang stroll into the training area. As usual, Julin couldn’t shut up.
“D’ya Sleep outside last night freak?” he snickered, his gang following suit.
Kal shook his head in irritation, “Shut up July, we are here to train. Not to swing our dicks around.”
Julin's face darkened and his little gang did the same. Gods they pissed him off, they weren’t much better off than Kal, they were all a similar age to Kal but were lucky to be over level 14. Not that those levels meant all that much since they were all Serfs. If Kal remembered correctly Serfs only got three attribute points per level which was honestly terrible. The only benefit was that two of the three were free points and could be allocated anywhere, and the last was in vitality. So if they concentrated their attributes into strength they would likely have more than him, but they would likely be lower in other areas due to not being able to acquire attributes the old-fashioned way.
Julin was about to bark back a reply when the last person Kal expected to come appeared. The prophet and a small entourage of imperial guards strolled into the training area. Most of the other trainees had arrived at this point and were all just as surprised as Kal was. But after a moment Kal remembered the tournament, he had kind of assumed it would be canceled after his core cleansing but that didn't appear to be the case.
The Prophet stood confidently in front of all the trainees, several camp followers had also arrived to see what the man was planning, “Good day young aspirants of Dhinir, today our valiant soldiers will march toward the forces of the betrayer. Their location was revealed to us last night after one of their amateur scouts led us right to them and allowed our men to relay their location back to us,” the gathered people cheered, “To honor our coming victory I will be holding a small tournament for a hopeful aspirants so that they may battle as our faithful soldiers will this day.”
The crowd cheered again. Damn, they are really eating this up… Kal thought as he listened, watching the faces of the trainees. Each of them looked ecstatic at the opportunity, which Kal couldn’t deny would be exciting and hopefully useful for his growth, but the sheer devotion each of them was showing was quite, well… disturbing. Many of them fell to their knees at the declaration. Then Kal noticed something else. No one was standing within about fifteen feet of him, there were plenty of people here and the training area wasn’t that large but for some reason, they were staying away. They have probably heard of the freak. He thought as the Prophet continued.
“The tournament will commence one hour after midday once our faithful warriors have commenced their raid upon our enemy!”
Kal wasn’t a fan of the symbology of the whole thing but wished the soldiers luck in taking out the Order. He just hoped that Harlm’s son would be found unharmed. Kal regretted not speaking to Harlm again, but he had nothing else to say to him. It wasn’t like Kal was strong enough to help in the raid and even if he was Melisia would likely think it was too great a risk to take him directly to the Order.
The gathered crowd slowly dispersed after the Prophet’s announcement, and annoyingly so did most of the trainees. He thought he might as well leave too. It was probably a bad idea to do too much physical activity right before he fought for real. So he decided to go meditate and try to see if he could form strands with his vital energy now.
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Nyx chuckled, “I can’t believe they fell for that!” nudging her friend with her elbow.
“Yes, well it does appear you are correct. The enemy does appear to be quite… Incompetent,” Kiara sighed, rubbing her arm, “It makes me wonder how Dhinir has been so successful these last few centuries.”
Nyx had retreated back to the Orders camp and notified the Elders of His appearance and of course, they had questioned her thoroughly. But ultimately they decided that the retrieval and testing of the man was now their first priority and luckily for Nyx, they allowed her to join the retrieval team. The team consisted of four members besides Nyx. There was Kuri the stealth specialist, Danar the Shade Archer, Eliza the Battle Mage, and finally Kiara the Illusionist. They were easily the best team this cell of the Order had. Moving through any camp was normally no issue for the team but Kuri was concerned about the presence of Commander Hurius, one of the Empire's most dangerous commanders. He was a special liking to those with higher than average perception scores so getting in and out of the camp could prove more difficult than expected. So Kiara and the elders came up with the plan to encourage the Commander and his soldiers to separate from their slower followers from the main camp and attempt to chase down the Order. Though of course, the order would be at little risk in this scenario since Kiara had created a quite frankly, ridiculously convincing illusion of a replica of their camp and fed it into the minds of some of the enemy soldiers. Nyx had watched them scramble to activate their message stones and notify their commander. It was too bad their true camp would be several miles away by the time their soldiers finally made it to the false one. Meanwhile, their team would be in the process of finally achieving their order’s goal.
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Kal returned to Melisia's tent to find her now dressed in light blue battle robes and inspecting a long staff made out of a strange-looking wood, it seemed to reflect surrounding light into a multitude of different colors.
Melisia looked up from the staff, her expression grim, “I’m sure you heard that the raid will begin tonight before the Order gets a chance to flee further.”
Kal nodded, “Yes I had wondered if you would be going too,” Kal had always assumed she would get involved somehow but she didn’t seem like much of a fighter despite her level.
“Yes, The Commander requested that I join them on the raid itself, due to my previous history with the cult he wants me to assist in identifying this cell's leaders,” her face scrunched up slightly, “I have my reservations, but I will not allow any more children to be taken.”
Kal guessed he could understand her issues with hunting down her old order. He assumed they couldn’t all be pricks and as she mentioned they were all once kidnapped children at some point.
“Ok well, good luck then. Is it ok if I use your tent to meditate?”
Melisia’s frown was replaced with a quick smile, “Of course, and good luck with whatever the Prophet has planned. But please be careful, the Prophet is a dangerous man,” she turned to leave, “Oh and I was able to get permission for Leo to stay in camp tonight. So he will be watching during.”
Great… Now the man who had been teaching him the most would be there to comment on his terrible form between rounds. Ok, it was actually a good thing but he was not used to so much attention and he would probably be getting a lot of it once he actually turned up at the mock tournament.
They both said their goodbyes and Kal spent the rest of the morning resting his body and practicing his strands. Each of his attributes went off without a hitch, and the vitality strand formed just as easily but the process was different. The glowing red strands of vitality seemed to form all around his core space, first, it appeared as embers a lot like the one Dhinir had left him. From embers, they became small pools of vitality and then with a sudden energy the pools spun into a vortex of red light before darting into his thread. Kal could feel that his health had dropped when the strand was formed but it was manageable as long as he didn’t just burn threads without regard. It really did seem like perceiving the energy you wanted to manipulate was incredibly important in forging it in the way Kal was, but he suspected his Soul Forge skill was not a common ability. As he understood from his short discussion with Melisia, most people would learn to manipulate their energies to at least some degree. But their focus was to more fully understand their skills and hopefully improve upon them, not forge a new core.
By the time Kal had formed his new and improved thread it had already been around five hours so when he finally stood and left the tent the camp had been emptied of most of its soldiers. All that was left were the youngest soldiers and the camp followers, besides Leo of course. Kal was starving after his morning of training and went looking for Dalen. He found Dalen over by the training area where several laborers were gathering furniture out of dimensional storage bags and assembling a small seating area for everyone who was going to watch the fights. Dalen was busy selling off some of his more palatable brews but smiled when he saw Dalen approach.
Kal pointed toward the laborers, “This is starting to feel like more than just a mock tournament. Do they do it often?”
Dalen chuckled, “Gods Kal you need to get out more, Yeah many of the Prophets of Dhinir like to throw these kinds of things before battles to hopefully gain a few more soldiers. But I have heard it can be done to pay respects to the warriors going into battle too.”
“It just seems kind of arrogant to leave so many people mostly unguarded,” Kal said, looking around at the sheer lack of soldiers.
Dalen leaned towards Kal, “Well Dhinir’s followers aren’t known for sound strategy,” he whispered, “Sure their armies are powerful but that's more due to its size than anything else.”
Kal just nodded, The Commander obviously thought there was very little risk in leaving the camp followers here.
The two of them ate their lunch together and watched the tournament's staging area expand. The laborers also set down a metal ring that had a radius of about fifty feet, plenty of room for a melee battle and even some agile ranged units could use that amount of space. But Kal had stopped paying attention shortly after that. A tense sensation had begun building in his chest, distracting him from his surroundings. His heart began to pound and the feeling began to grow more intense and almost painful before it suddenly stopped and his awareness once again back to normal. The seats all around where Kal and Dalen had been eating their stew were empty. What the hell…
“Where did everybody go?”
Dalen shrugged, “I dunno, I figured they just had jobs to do,” Dalen said, around a mouthful of stew.