Chapter 44

Initiation

Frank waited for death, but surprisingly death never came.

Silence.

The world around Frank was complete silence.

Drip.

Well, aside from the random dripping sounds that could be heard echoing around. Frank wondered exactly what was dripping. At least he did for a moment, until he realized that some of the exploding monster parts around him might have ended up on the ceiling or other areas where dripping into the larger pools below would be heard.

Regardless of the reason for the otherwise perfect silence and serenity, Frank took the moments to regain his mental faculties.

His mind and body both felt like they had been pushed beyond their normal limits, but that was fine. He had been through worse. Actually, this entire SERE training event was designed to ensure that today he was ready for such a feat.

Frank waited, and waited, until finally his mind began to calm.

He was still groggy, still had that fuzzy experience at the peripherals of his mind, but he was now able to think.

Finally, after who knew how long, Frank decided to start moving again. This was done by him grabbing, kicking and doing everything but flying over the smooth outer carapace of the dead oversized deceased guardian insect.

This ended up with him eventually cresting the top, and then as soon as his body and weight met that critical mass where more was on the open side than the side he just came from, inertia took over and forced him forward.

Splash.

Frank lashed out, desperately trying to grab onto anything, but his overly taxed muscles didn’t respond in time. This caused Frank to fly forward without any means of slowing himself down all but firing him directly into the pool of dead insect viscera.

Pausing for only a second, Frank shot up and then tremblingly began walking out of the now cold liquid as he began walking. Each step painful as he felt like all of his muscles had been burn-locked into place and only through forced movement was he actually able to continue moving forward.

By the time he made his way around the first turn, he felt he could walk and move almost normally. Then he began swinging his arms about by the next turn, finally he added twists and overreaching stretches to his movements. This way, when he finally made it back to the top portion of the Earth Energy pole, Frank had regained all of his previous mobility.

There were still a few lingering aches, but by now Frank just attributed this to his now normal state of being and not directly related to his prior interaction with the pillar.

Once again Frank found himself standing in front of the earthen pillar.

This time, he found that the monsters that had been waiting for him, the warriors, were gone.

Pausing for a moment, Frank wondered if the monsters had either been lured away by another cultivator at the main section of the tunnels. Or if these monsters had decided to move on.

Regardless of the reason, Frank no longer felt their active energy sources nearby, which was all the reassurance that Frank needed for his not being overrun by the remaining members of the hive. Members who would no doubt be even angrier at Frank now that he killed the lower guardians of the hive as well.

Still, everything told Frank that he was momentarily safe, which was all he needed.

Taking in a deep breath he braced himself. Then reaching forward placed his right hand on the pillar just like before and then he waited.

Nothing.

For a moment Frank braced himself, wondering if there would be a delayed surge or something. Maybe he was broken? Or maybe the pillar itself was broken?

No, quickly scanning the pillar, Frank realized that the output of energy was almost twice as effective as it had been previously. In fact, it was so potent that Frank almost thought the last few warriors who had been on the other side of the barrier had been irradiated by the additional energy.

Though Frank was fairly certain that he would have felt the residue of monster corpses rotting on the other side.

Pausing Frank took his hand back and looked at it. Now that he had light, he could see that by and large, his hand looked fine. It was a hand after all. But nothing. Then looking down he once again took a moment to check out his new marking that resided on the same right arm, the dark outline of a mountain. Or at least that is what Frank’s mind interpreted the symbol to be.

Seeing that his hand was fine, he place the same hand back on the pillar.

Again, nothing.

“Okay?” Frank said, clearly not understanding what exactly was happening.

For a moment, he wondered if he needed to use the other hand?

This of course didn’t make any sense to Frank. Besides why would he want to potentially limit the mobility and effectiveness of his dominant hand? This was something else they were taught throughout their training.

“Once you get your first marking, you can only keep getting additional markings on that same arm. Meaning the hand that you place on the pillar should be your non-dominant hand.” The instructor called out, before showing that he himself had three markings on his left arm.

From what Frank had been told and understood of this process, you could only use one arm the entire time.

Which was why Frank now found himself questioning what exactly was happening.

Frank found himself debating with the idea that he might need to use his other hand, due to the different polarities? Maybe something to do with the way opposites repel and the fact that no one had ever tried to get both sections of the pillar.

Not having anything else to go off of and really feeling that it was either try the other hand or move on, despite this pillar clearly having a full charge, Frank debated for a second. Then lackadaisically slapped his dominant left hand against the pillar.

SURGE!

The instant Frank touched the pillar, he felt an intense burning sensation flow through his fingers, into his arm and all but lock his body into place.

Everything burned.

For a moment, all Frank could see and feel was white hot fire coursing through his veins.

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Then his mind registered the system message that seemed like it had been there for a while, but he had mentally been ignoring the thought due to his not being mentally prepared for the pain.

Positive Polarity: Earth Energy Pillar Identified. Extracting energy now…

In hindsight, it had been foolish not to expect that something like this would happen. He had thought this would work, even if at a slight outside chance. So the fact that he wasn’t mentally prepared to receive the pain that he was now experiencing was on him.

Just like before, Frank felt the energy from the pillar drain out and swell into his body and focus on creating an exact mirrored image of the same mountain that he had on his right arm. This one though was the color contrast. While the other one had been done in dark shades, this one was made entirely with deep browns of earth Qi.

This new pain was nearly unbearable and for a moment, Frank wondered if the two opposing forces would fight and try to rip each other apart.

Fortunately, Frank saw more system messages that began glowing brightly on the pillar before him. While the final message in his mind also seemed to glow and almost beacon back to the pillar, as if allowing his mind to transmit the material that would soon come.

Sympathetic Balancing Polarity Identified: Full Earth Polarity Initialized, calibrating…

At first there were multiple lines, but then finally a style of language similar to the common language taught to all was identified.

With that Frank both found his own eyes tracking the words that began to form and expand based on how his own eyes were reacting to reading the different lines of text.

Logically, Frank knew that the likely red light coming from the pillar and scanning his face was how the pillar knew to stick to common, but the entire process was still impressive to Frank.

For a moment, he wondered if he could use this to learn other forms of communication, but soon dismissed that thought as the gravity of the words before him registered within his mind.

Starting energy usage Tutorial: Earth Energy.

What is Earth Energy you ask? Well to put it simply, it is the energy to help fix the world around you. Note, there needs to be balance in all things, as such the more Earth energy you use, the more Negative Earth Energy you create. This does not mean that Negative Earth Energy is inherently bad, but will make future uses of Positive Earth Energy tougher and tougher to perform until a balance is achieved.

Current Learning Objective: learn to cultivate negative and positive particles of earth energy in your body. Use your new markers as temporary cores for these new energy types. Current Status: Rank: N/A Earth Energy Cultivator. Warning: Now that the tutorial for Earth Energy has begun, you will lose all progress if you access a different training module before meeting the minimum standards. Status Confirmation: Do you wish to begin your training tutorial for Earth Energy now? Or would you like to take a moment to rest?

Seeing the message before his eyes, Frank paused and wondered exactly what had been missed by not accessing both portions of the pillar.

To his knowledge, Frank had not received a bonus for interacting with either portion of the pillar. Did this mean he would get a bonus only after he left?

Also, did this mean that his boundary that had been holding him back was now released? That he could theoretically leave and then come back at a later time if needed?

First, Frank took a moment to expand his senses outwards and found that the monsters that had apparently gone further away from the border, were now coming back.

Then before he really had time to contemplate everything and the possible distinctions he mentally thought that regardless of being able to leave or not, he really wanted to at least try his hand at the unique training opportunity, not wanting to squander this otherwise amazing opportunity.

Just as he had the thought, multiple things happened simultaneously.

First, the other warrior insects came back to within his sensing range, something odd happened.

At the same time Frank felt their presence and was mentally annoyed at their arrival, the system seemed to pick up on the unease and began to speak.

Intruder detected. Warning, assistance during the training program is punishable by death.

Reading the warning, Frank felt an instant surge of adrenaline take him as he wondered how he could be punished for monsters coming to interact and mess with him during his training.

“”

The sound of a calm angel spoke in a language that Frank could only wish he understood. Fortunately, the distance and direction of the spoken voice indicated that it was directed away from him, and towards the still rapidly advancing evolved warrior insects.

Warrior insects who made quick work of the thin rip away tunnel entrance and were already storming their own tunnels and charging directly towards Frank.

Training Area Initiated: Warning, stepping out of the designated training area or others coming in, will be seen as an attempt to cheat and will be met with extreme prejudice.

With that warning in place, Frank felt a barrier extend out from the giant pillar right in front of him and extend out past Frank, surrounding him and a few feet of clearance in each direction.

Now that the barrier was in place, Frank could feel and sense a surge of brown earth infused energy surrounding him.

Training is set to begin: Pull in all the ambient positively aligned Earth Energy into your body.

Frank read and understood the instructions, but felt slightly distracted as he wondered if he would have to fight off the invading monsters that for whatever reason chose this moment to return.

Warning: Focus on your training, we will deal with eliminating all distractions.

“.”

Once again, the sound of angels speaking filled the air. Just like last time the sounds were directed towards the warrior insects.

Piercing Ray Beam!

A blindingly bright ray of golden energy fired out from the pillar and pierced the charging warrior insect right in its thick skull, right between its two sets of large round black eyes and just past its large double set of mandibles.

With the beam of light, the surging creature dropped instantly. One second it was charging forward, the next second a tiny beam of light pierced through its skull and forced the overly aggressive monster to collapse to the ground, dead.

Then as more of the monsters seemed to pass the same imaginary line of separation, more beams of light shot out, striking down the monsters and dropping them all into a pile that now resided a dozen feet or so away from Frank’s sitting body.

Begin training.

The warning flashed angrily, causing Frank to turn his attention away from the quickly growing pile of dead and lifeless evolved insects, and forced him to stare forward.

It was at this point that Frank realized he did not want to also get on the bad side of this training module. So without truly thinking about it, Frank held out his left hand, the hand with the arm that had the symbol for positively charged earth energy, and began to pull the energy into his hand.

As was expected, the tiny motes of earth energy entered his body and began to burn their way through his meridians.

At least they did burn their way through his meridians until they found their way to his marking for earth energy.

Once the energy reached his marking, Frank watched as the dimly glowing brown outline began to grow brighter with every mote of energy absorbed.

At first the particles were easy to grab, but after a point the pieces became harder and harder to affect.

There was a point, where he tried to get up from his spot on the ground. The moment he did, he was met with a barrage of bright lights, and warnings.

Do not move from your spot.

Seeing the message, Frank paused, and then immediately collapsed to the ground back to his sitting position. The minute he did the seemingly annoyed warning light went off and he was once again allowed to focus on his training.

“Okay, don’t move it is,” Frank said, taking a quick glance over at the pile of dead insects before going back to his training, where he then began directing his left hand towards the different motes of energy.

Again, this tactic was only a stop gap, and really only helped pick out a few of the motes of energy.

Pausing for a moment, Frank realized that using his hand as a focal point was likely a crutch. No, it had to be, and that he was clearly missing something with this training.

No doubt, there would have been dozens or hundreds of things taught to a promising cultivator when these pillars were first created.

This also brought up the idea of who created these pillars in the first place?

How was it that they expected someone to have both polarities, but as far as Frank was aware of, there were no records of someone being able to actually cultivate both types of energy. Well at least not until he came around. Major Demoniker supposedly could do so, but that also seemed to be a stretch. While he was capable of cycling his distant source of energy, he lacked the capacity to do so with his internal Qi. At least that was what Frank now believed of his former instructor.

That or, the instructor’s energy that he cultivated was vastly different from the type that Frank could currently wield.

Despite his surroundings, Frank just let his mind wander, as he took in the momentary reprieve. So long as he was cultivating, his body felt full and satiated, which meant that so long as he was here, he could theoretically continue on with his training indefinitely.

Frank was so lost in his thoughts and idly cultivating that he failed to notice how over time every mote of energy slowly moved towards him. Almost like pulling a tablecloth with an assortment of plates, so long as Frank continued to pull slowly and methodically enough, every plate on the table cloth would come towards him. This was apparently the same concept for these motes of earth energy.

Earth energy was slow, methodical, and above all unstoppable once it started moving, which meant it was also impossible to start moving.

Only once he found that the heavier earth energy particles continued to roll and move towards him, even if he momentarily forgot to continue to cycle his energy did he realize the apparent trick of cultivating earth energy. Or at least positively charged earth energy.

Relaxing slightly, Frank felt his mind and body relaxing as quite possibly the hardest and most excruciating exercise he had ever performed was over.

What filled him was the thrill of completion that could only be accomplished once you had pushed yourself to your mental limits, and beyond.

After the first round, Frank was completely ready to stop and call it a day. Particularly with how tough it had been up to this point.

At least that was what he thought, until he got the next message.

Progress through stage one: 50% complete. Now beginning the second part.

Seeing that message, Frank could only exhale. As he mentally prepared for the next part of the challenge before him.

This time he could already feel the negatively charged earth particles being pulled up and through the floor and placed in the impromptu training area around him.

Pull in all the ambient negatively aligned Earth Energy into your body.

Seeing the message Frank could only exhale as he realized this test was still underway.

During this time Frank was so focused on the narrow world around him, that he failed to notice the lurking threat that came through the recently carved cave opening. Nor did he register the sudden influx of fresh air, just before the ignition of a fiery blaze sparked to life and began to strike out directly for an unaware and unprepared Frank.