Since the meeting with President Bank wasn’t for a few days, what I really wanted to do was get back to training. A couple hours lounging in Lacy’s bed—along with other activities—had done wonders to recharge me.
With a renewed purpose, I strode into the training room and waved to Kurian. Athena, Lex, and Lacy followed, while the others went out into the Personal Space hallway.
“Hey, Kurian,” I said.
“We’re ready for training Master Kurian!” Athena said with a bubbly enthusiasm.
Kurian regarded us silently, then turned to look at Lacy in silent question.
“Oh, uh, I’d love to learn if you’ll teach me.” Quickly, she added, “But I can just watch if that’s inappropriate or…” She trailed off as Kurian waved his hand to include her in the group. Happily, she skipped over, a childlike smile on her face.
His usual chair disappeared beneath him as he rose to his full height. With another wave of his hand, a portion of the training room stirred. Wooden structures rose up from the concrete floor, resolving into what appeared to be an obstacle course. The starting point was clearly demarcated and the course terminated in a giant vert ramp eerily similar to a Ninja Warrior course.
My limbs vibrated in anticipation—this was literally my favorite thing in the world. Christ, I’d been making my own homemade version before Lex’s System message had filled my vision.
“Ohhh, yeah. Now, we’re talking—”
Kurian cut me off with a gesture toward Athena.
“This is her course.” Turning to the girl, he waved his hand to spur her on. “Go.”
She looked at me once in quick surprise, then peeled away at a sprint, a wide grin on her face.
Studying the course closer, I squinted.
“That’s gotta be a 15-foot wall at the end there,” I said quietly so as not to steal the wind from Athena’s sails. “Pre-Integration, it woulda been a bitch, even for me.”
The giant alien ignored me, turning toward Lacy. She was suddenly squirming under the weight of his gaze, trying her best to appear casual, but failing miserably.
“Projection with an emphasis on light and sound next to a Leadership core,” Kurian mused. He pursed his lips and nodded. “Very powerful. I see Dondarius’ hand on your Projection core, but your Leadership core is clearly self-actualized.”
She nodded quickly. “Yes, ah, yes…I don’t know why but it happened.”
His eyes narrowed and he regarded her coolly for a moment before saying, “Yes you do. Cores don’t form on accident, young lady.”
She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “Sure felt like an accident…” Then she looked up and remembered who she was speaking to. “Uh, sir!”
He waved his hand dismissively.
“Kurian or Kure will suffice. It’s the girl that needs the structure,” he said with a nod toward Athena.
I glanced over and saw her struggling at one of the early stages of the course—a log roll that was obviously too large for her size.
Kurian regarded Lacy a moment longer, then nodded once. “Your powers work best with a team, of course.” He waved his hand again and an entire castle facade materialized at the far end of the room. A bridge crossed a moat, leading to the castle interior. Two faint figures stood on either side of the bridge, while even more patrolled the top of the wall. Another six figures lurked outside the castle, hiding from the guards’ view in a nearby ditch. “Infiltrate the castle and extract the owner’s treasure. If you lose a team member, you fail. If you are spotted before entering the castle walls, you fail. If you manage to retrieve the item, you may be spotted, so long as you extract it successfully.” He held up a single, forearm-length, blue finger. “Note, this castle is guarded by an Adept-Stage Cultivator…and higher. If they sound the alarm, you’re chances are not good.”
Her eyes grew wide at that last part, then a wave of determination rolled across her face and she set her lips.
“Yes, Kure.”
Then she was running across the room. As she passed some invisible line, the entire scenario became shrouded in an opaque barrier and I realized with a disappointed sigh that I wouldn’t be able to track her progress like I could Athena’s.
“What about me?” Ugh, it sounded lame and whiny even as I said it, but if I wasn’t going to be able to watch Lacy work, I really needed a distraction.
Kurian ignored my question, leaning down toward the floor. With both his hands wide, palms facing inward, he made a motion like he was unfurling a rug.
And then, he actually was unfurling a rug.
It was simple in weave, a solid grey rug that reminded me of a prayer rug or a yoga mat. He laid it out in front of him and it was clear as day that it wasn’t sized for him in the slightest.
Oh, no. No, no, no, no…
He ignored the dawning horror on my face and waved his hand invitingly toward the mat. My knees locked up of their own accord and I leaned away unconsciously.
His hand remained poised above the rug, prompting me forward. A memory rose up of one of our earlier conversations and I felt my palms begin to itch.
“To truly unlock an Affinity’s potential, you must embody that Affinity,” he had said.
To which I had asked, “How does one embody Friction?”
His answer…?
“Practice. And meditation.”
It seemed that it was finally time to pay the piper. I’d done plenty of that first part and absolutely zero of the second.
Come on, Dirk, it’s just a rug! Just a fuckin’ rug…
No, that rug laying there beneath Kurian’s inviting hand was boredom incarnate. Time wasted. No, worse than wasted. Time to reflect. I’d done ten years of that. So much good that had done.
Okay, stop being a baby. Just sit down, close your fucking eyes, and do it.
Slowly—like I had to peel my feet up from the floor one inch at a time—I made my way toward the rug. I only groaned a little bit as I tucked my knees under me and sat down.
Kurian stood behind me and I craned to look over my shoulder. A kink was already beginning to form in my neck.
His deep voice boomed out.
“Close your eyes.”
I did, but I was far from at ease. My ears picked up at the sounds of Athena grunting with frustration, Kurian pulling out a chair from thin air and plopping into it—and why did he get a chair?—and the sounds of my own breathing filling my lungs.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Have you meditated before?”
I resisted the urge to turn and look at him.
“Sort of…?”
“Then we will start from the beginning.”
What followed wasn’t as bad as I had feared. His voice drowned out the other noises for the most part and I was engaged enough trying to follow his directions that the intrusive thoughts didn’t invade…much.
But I never achieved what I would describe as a restful state. Thoughts of Lacy splashed across my mind. How was she doing? Was she killing it? Struggling?
Athena cried out in pain, cheered in triumph, and made all sorts of noises that made me want to yell at her like a grumpy old man finding a group of kids on his lawn.
But I was here. I was doing the thing. Periods of peace—or, at least, periods of no thoughts—peppered through the general malaise of my reluctance.
In my mind’s eye, I followed the air’s passage through my nose, down into my lungs, then back out again.
Over and over and over and—
Then something occurred to me—a random thought spiking into my brain like a flash of lightning cracking one street over.
It felt like my flow state.
That particular state of mind I entered when in a competitive situation. I’d trained to enter it my whole life, never realizing what it was. Shit, I’d been using it in every fight with Kneer, before and after the Tower opened. The memory of climbing down the cliffs to face the overleveled Jree Prime flashed across my mind. Even as near as a few hours ago, I’d been in that state when we’d fended off the hordes of imps from the refugees we’d escorted.
Now that I understood what I was supposed to be doing, I had something to work toward. That didn’t mean it was a simple as flipping a switch. I’d trained myself to associate that state of mind with a physical activity and that was how I usually triggered it. But life was all about changing your perspective. I continued to track my breathing with my mind, managing to turn it into a game of sorts. It was a far cry from the powerful focus imparted by the Olympic games or the life-and-death struggles against Kneer.
But it was a start.
Time passed—I don’t know how much—and I slowly sank deeper and deeper into that familiar state. At some point, I stopped needing to focus on my breathing and my thoughts were just…there. They weren’t gone, it wasn’t a blank state of being or anything. But as soon as they entered, I let them go. And to my surprise, they went. Like they’d shown up at a party and been ignored by the host—they simply passed through and were gone.
A notification flashed across my closed eyes, but I barely registered it.
Your skill [Meditation] has leveled up to level 3
Kurian’s voice sounded in my mind—not out loud, but inside. Somehow, it didn’t affect my meditative state.
Focus on your Friction core. Begin cycling as you contemplate its nature, his voice said.
That did affect my focus, but I managed to keep my thoughts and emotions under control as followed his command.
Peering into my soul space, I regarded my three cores. The Friction core was the one I was most familiar with and had been integral to my initial combat style after the Apocalypse. When I examined the swirling ball of grey energy, I felt a personal comfort that clashed with the inherent nature of Friction.
Even as a Low Tier core, the energy had possessed an element of conflict as it moved inside the core. Now, it practically crashed against itself, creating a tumultuous environment within the core. The tendrils scraped and bumped and struggled to escape their confines. When I reached out with my mind to coax it past the barrier, it sloshed out like it had just been waiting for an excuse.
As it began to course through my body, I directed it casually as I studied its passage. There were elements to the energy that were not simply characterized by its clashing nature. I knew that it could be employed to both reduce and increase friction. But there was more to it than just changing the grip of two surfaces. I could feel it.
I compared what I knew about friction from before the Tower to the energy I was studying now.
As a technological society, friction was one of the integral components of machinery. We reduced it in order to increase the efficiency of machines, for example. But we also used it to abrade surfaces with sand paper. The consistent contact between two moving surfaces causing the weaker one to give, layer by layer.
And that abrasion created heat…
I thought back to when I’d first learned to create fire by twisting a stick into the divot of a log. There had been tinder as fuel, but the effect was pure friction.
Following that train of thought, I directed the energy coursing through my body to the tips of my index finger and thumb. The energies perched there, eager to be directed, and I increased the friction between the pads of my fingers high enough to create resistance, but not so high that they were stuck together.
Slowly, I rubbed my thumb against my finger, feeling the resistance and pushing through. It only took a few moments for the heat to bloom, but once I felt it, I knew I was on the right track.
I increased the speed, feeling the pads of my fingers begin to burn. But I didn’t care—burns would heal. There was something there, just on the cusp of my brain. The heat became intense and I tunneled my brain into the two tendrils of energy colliding through my finger and thumb.
These Affinities were just concepts given life. The energy was just a byproduct of those energies. There was more to Friction—so much more—than what I had believed. It wasn’t just friction, but everything that stemmed from friction. Heat, aerodynamics, static electricity, abrasion…and more.
And then…
Your understanding of your Nascent Affinity: [Friction] has pushed it to the threshold. Continue expanding your understanding in order to evolve it to the next Stage.
I opened my eyes and gasped. The friction around me was palpable, but more than that, were its possibilities. Across the room, I tracked Athena racing across a log and knew that I could enhance the static electricity building up from the friction of her passage.
So I did.
A moment later, the discharge shocked her and she squeaked in surprise as she fell off the log and hit the sand floor below.
It had been a minimal charge, no stronger than the one you’d feel when getting shocked by a door knob. But that was just the surface. If I found a way to amplify the effect, I could electrocute enemies through the friction of their own movement.
Which brought me to the heat that had started to dissipate as I’d stopped rubbing my finger and thumb together.
Athena was still recovering from having the wind knocked out of her by her fall, so I turned to find a new victim.
On the table, Lex was preening his feathers, his beak digging in as he cleaned and moved them around. With a burst of intent, I affected that connection, focusing on increasing the heat-causing friction. As he groomed, I could sense the heat rising and he paused once he realized something odd was happening. I carefully avoided his gaze and he shrugged before returning to the task. The heat only increased and he fluttered his wings in annoyance.
“Am I getting a fever?” he asked no one. “No, that’s ridiculous. I can’t get sick…”
I snorted to myself but let him go back to cleaning his feathers.
While the changes in my understanding felt surreal, the reality was that those were just little pranks. What I really wanted to do was explore the combat applications.
But before that, I turned to Kurian, who I suddenly realized had been studying me quite intently.
“Congratulations,” he said, once he saw me look over. “Now the real work begins.”
***
The real work involved hours of tedium that left me simultaneously drained and excited. He directed me for most of that time, helping me to explore the limitations and capabilities of what Friction energy could accomplish.
Through that exploration, I finally was greeted with a prompt that sent shivers tracing up my spine.
Congratulations! Your Nascent Affinity: [Friction], is ready to be evolved. Select a specialization!
1. [Heat (Friction)]
2. [Static Electricity (Friction)]
3. [Abrasion (Friction)]
“Yes,” I whispered. Lex felt my excitement and waddled over. I turned to him. “Fucking yes!”
Athena paused her ascent up a difficult climb on her obstacle course to look over.
“What’s got you so excited?” she called over.
“I’m about to break through!”
Kurian coughed lightly behind me. I turned to see a mixed expression on his face. The twinkle in his eye made me think he was proud, but the frown on his lips said otherwise.
“Evolving a single core will not propel you to the Adept Stage. It is simply the first step.”
“Oh, well thanks for pissing on my campfire,” I muttered. Narrowing my eyes, I pointed a finger at him. “Hey, now that I think about it, you never did tell me what those steps were. What comes after picking a specialization?”
He didn’t answer right away and waved for Athena to join us. Her eyes went wide, the sweat drenching her hair and clothes indicative of hours of hard work. But when she realized she was being invited to the grown up discussion, she leaped the ten foot drop from the wall with a graceful bend of her knees and raced over.
“How the…?” I wasn’t an expert on ten-year-olds, but I didn’t imagine they could make jumps like that with barely a grunt.
Before I could question her on the improbable nature of that display, Kurian was in teaching mode.
“Dirk here has brought his Friction core to the brink of an evolution,” Kurian said to Athena. “The System has given him a few options based on his own personal observations and theories, but that is not the totality of his choices.”
My eyes went wide. “Wait, really? Like I can create my own specialization?” Heat, static electricity, and abrasion all sounded really cool, but I loved the idea of eating off menu, as it were.
Kurian nodded. “The System is simply a framework to guide young Cultivators on their Path. The true possibilities are limited only by your imagination and understanding.”
He leaned in, bending down until he was eye-to-eye with me.
“However, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”