Chapter 5

Frank awoke to feel the thrum of a pounding headache within his skull. Despite his clearly sleeping outside in a pile of dirt and debris, he felt warm. The reason for this warmth was readily apparent, as his body spent the entire time circulating the energy he had gathered before passing out.

This meant that his body was nearing a breakthrough, and that if he didn’t allow the process to flow throughout his body would break down. At least that was what all the lessons he had been taught in school passed on to him.

Yet, for some reason, despite being full of energy, he felt that his body wasn’t ready for the transition. That or if he pushed now, he would miss something, as his body was on the precipice of doing something, forming a distinct change.

Zap.

Trying to get up, to at least prop his head up and look around the area, he was surprised. Or maybe a little move focused on setting he was now in. As the horizontal shaft had easily twice as much to triple the energy that the vertical shaft he had climbed to get here had.

Granted this place was so dirty, and filled with clumps of human and animal hairs and dirt that no sane person would willingly come in here without use of a hazardous material suit. Even then the suit would prevent anyone from cultivating the ambient energy around them.

Yet, here Frank was in a land that was clearly flowing with a seeming abundance of ambient energy. As he stared out, he felt his eyes drawing in some of his excessive energy that was running rampant in his body.

Feeling that he was close to a personal breakthrough, he focused on his eyes, realizing that if he so chose, he could cultivate to help improve his awakened Trait. Normally for anyone C-Rank and below this was a wase of time and resources, as most would choose to spend all their gathered energy on improving their physical body, forcing their body to evolve into the next layer of development. While Frank did want this, he felt his body was too sore, his muscles now ached.

Frank couldn’t tell if his body’s soreness was a cause of being awakened and then forcing his way through not one but two evolutions too quickly, or if it was as he expected that he cultivated with a full flood of energy in his body. That had slowly but surely worn away at the lining of his body.

Regardless of the true reason, Frank now knew that he had to act, if he was going to being to allow his body to relax and finally heal.

That was when Frank decided to do something stupid, namely he forced the torrent of energy that was raging throughout his body into his eyes, in the hopes that it might somehow improve his Trait. He had heard tales about how the first cultivators used this very trick to evolve past F-Rank talents and forge their bodies to create and utilize the first A-Rank talents and beyond.

Idly Frank chuckled to himself as he imagined advancing his power enough so that he could eventually shoot lasers from his eyes.

He thought about it, and then decided to devote his full reserve of energy towards doing just that, towards improving his F-Rank ability and hopefully unlocking the path towards gaining a D or higher ranked talent.

In his mind, he knew this would be a process, that he wouldn’t be able to jump magically from an F-Rank Talent to an B or even A rank Talent. This was why he went slowly. Well slowly for how fast Frank wanted to go, he was sure that compared to the other members of his former class, he was heads and shoulders past them. Well most of them, as he was certain that Luther right now was being stuffed with even more cultivation resources to ramp up his already deadly voice attack power.

For a moment he wondered what Luther was doing, and if anyone had gone to check on his two dead friends. Going back to the mouth of the shaft, Frank was relieved to see that the coast was clear. Though if he wanted to get down, he would clearly need to find another way, as the entire shaft had been broken and crumpled in on itself, making it so he would need to fall a good twenty feet to be able to get out. Even then Frank couldn’t be certain that Luther didn’t set up some type of monitoring system for him.

No, he had no intention of leaving. Especially not with so much ambient energy just waiting for him.

Breathe in, breathe out.

With the exhale, Frank forcefully cycled his ambient Qi through his body and making it so the energy finally stopped when it slammed into his eyes.

Blur, flicker, flash.

With each cycle of energy, Frank could feel an immediate change to the way his eyes could see everything. First his vision would go slightly dark, coming in a bit from the sides. Then there would be a tiny light coming from the sides that had just been blocked off. Then finally the last part was the way the energy motes glowed to his eyes.

The more he did his cycles, the more he saw even tinier motes of energy next to the already large and bright motes of energy that he had recognized before.

This cycling process continued until all the burning energy within his body ran out and he could feel his body relax as it no longer felt like he was burning up from the inside.

Only once all the burning and aches from his body were gone did Frank let out a long sigh of relief and almost collapse back into the giant clumps of dirt and debris, but soon caught himself. By now his clothes were a complete mess, but that didn’t matter, as he could feel that the world had changed around him.

Looking around with his new and improved eyes, Frank could tell that there was more to the energy than he was currently capable of comprehending.

Brown streak.

If he stared just hard enough, Frank swore that he could see different shades of colors within the motes. Almost like each mote was made up of individual strings of colors.

Curious about this, Frank wondered if he could see more into the colors if he further enhanced his Talent. He remembered seeing light blue streaks coming from Luther when he used his voice attack, was that something that actually happened?

Realizing that there was only one way to test out his theory, Frank got up and gingerly went over to the ambient energy. As he approached, he could see that the energy was slightly pulled towards his body. Again, something curious was going on with that, though Frank didn’t quite understand what.

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Though Frank himself didn’t know, he knew that if he asked one of his former teachers, they might be able to tell him.

Still that was a long way away. First, Frank wanted to find out exactly how much energy remained here, and what he could do about it.

Reluctantly, Frank held out his hand and tried to absorb the large mote of energy, not focusing on the multiple smaller motes of energy that surrounded the larger one, at least not for now. The reason was simple, as he didn’t want the same burning sensation to be let loose inside his body.

Touching the energy, Frank could see that the energy he absorbed was somehow wrong, but he also felt that it wouldn’t be a problem. Well, it wouldn’t be a problem, so long as he worked on using the different components of the energy as quickly as possible and made sure it didn’t remain within his body for any real length of time.

Slight burn.

There was a slight burn that Frank felt from the energy, but that was somehow bearable. The effect was like when he cut open his hand and had to bandage it. So long as he was careful and didn’t do too much with the injured hand, his wound would be fine, the minute he pushed himself he would begin to feel intense pain. This was no different. Well, that is not true, it was entirely different, but the concept was the same, at least the way Frank saw it.

With this Frank would quickly absorb the energy, cycle it once or twice around his body and then force it to finally rest within his eyes.

He did this eleven more times, until he felt his mind awakening as he could feel the nerve endings in his eyes forming new pathways and connections which his brain. He could feel his consciousness opening up, as he felt that he was suddenly able to take in more.

Frank wasn’t smarter, he couldn’t suddenly do the math problems that always gave him problems. Rather, he could now comprehend more of the world around him. He could not just see the large motes of energy, but he could see that they were made up of multiple smaller motes. Smaller motes of energy that all had different energy components to them.

Shocked, Frank just stared on in wonder at the sight. Gently reaching out he grabbed a floating mote of energy, the same way one might try to catch a soap bubble that was floating in the air. However, unlike the soap bubbles that burst upon contact, these bubbles held their form and focusing to make sure he didn’t inadvertently absorb the energy, Frank looked on in wonder.

He was different colors that were all present in these motes of energy, Deep browns, light blues, reds, oranges, and there at the very core was a bright green.

Frank didn’t know why, perhaps it was the favorite color, or at least the most vibrant color of those he was able to see in the mote before him, but Frank felt himself drawn to the green color.

Focusing on just the green color, Frank wondered if he could somehow capture just that drop of energy. Even just looking at it, Frank could tell that his body also wanted the green mote of energy at the center of this cluster.

With a will and curiosity that Frank didn’t know he had, he focused on the mote of energy that was in his hand, its size smaller than that of the tip of his pinky finger. Yet, with his eyes enhanced as far as they were, he could clearly see the glowing green spark of energy.

Focusing on cultivation, Frank went about peeling off the outer layers of the mote of energy, the same way one might if they tried to peel the skin off a grape. The process was long, tedious, and above all required Frank to focus on minor details that he didn’t know he was capable of.

When he was done, he could see the glowing green core of the mote of energy, resting on the remaining clump of energy that was still on his palm. Then with his pointer finger, Frank reached out, touching the green mote of energy and then cultivated. Making sure to only absorb the glowing green core.

Soothing calm.

The moment he absorbed the green energy, he felt instant relief. The way a burn victim would feel relief by the application of aloe, so too did Frank feel relief from this highly condensed healing energy being released within his body.

Relief.

Frank let out a long sigh of relief, as he felt the green mote of energy cycle through his body, slowly wearing itself down as it got absorbed into the injured layers of his meridians, before finally disappearing completely.

With there being such a relief from just one mote of energy, Frank immediately looked to try this again, but found that the next mote he had, didn’t have green at the center. Looking at it, he saw that there was a giant red sphere. His body saw that, and was immediately confused. Part of him wanted to absorb the mote because it was energy and at his point any energy was good energy. But Frank didn’t want that, at least not yet.

In his mind, he interpreted the red color as being dangerous, or maybe unripe? Like how eating food that was old would cause pain, that is the feeling that his body associated with the red mote.

Not to be discouraged, Frank threw the mote away, making an easy pile that he could go back to later on.

With that, he began searching for different motes with green cores, or even green layers. He found that the ones with light blue cores had green layers. In this case, rather than peeling through the middle protective layer, Frank found himself just using his cultivation to absorb the green layer. As expected, the green layer felt both cool and refreshing to his body and mind.

Seeing that he had such success from the green protective inner layer, Frank then went for the light blue core. While there was no true sense of calm or healing from this, Frank could feel his mind becoming more aware of the surroundings.

For a moment, Frank looked around, wondering if he was truly alone in these unused ventilation shafts that had been abandoned long ago.

A quick look down showed that some of the hair he saw didn’t look to be human hairs, which made him grimace at the thought of so much body hair and dirt. Still, Frank couldn’t let this moment pass him by, as he continued to move his way forward, gently grabbing the full and half sized motes of energy and placing the ones that he didn’t like into a pile.

The mid-sized ones were similar to the larger ones, except for the fact that there was no middle protective layer of energy. Instead, it was just a brown protective shell, followed by a colored core that Frank felt either resonated with him, or didn’t.

After a few hours of him searching through the various cores, he found that his body had been healed. Though he had admittedly lost count sometime after twenty and was more focused on finding more and quickly stripping and absorbing the motes of energy that he wanted.

One.

Two.

Three.

Once the green motes of energy were no longer absorbed directly into his body, he began keeping track of the individual motes that he had absorbed. These were easier to track as Frank felt that he could actually feel these refined drops of energy cycling through his body, as they made him feel alive and rejuvenated with each cycle.

As time went on, Frank found himself going further and further down, though he made sure to string up unused motes of energy as makeshift light sources along the way. Making sure to place them in locations where they wouldn’t normally be found, making it so Frank easily knew if he had been to a particular area or not.

Granted, he wasn’t certain if his ability was meant to be used in such a way, namely to keep track in different areas, but it did seem to pay off.

Silence.

Frank paused as he realized something was off.

Pausing completely still, Frank tried to understand what exactly had changed to make his mind warn him of the sudden occurrence.

Only after a second or two of focusing did Frank realize what had happened. Namely he had moved from a metal floor, to that of a solid stone flooring under his feet.

The change from metal to stone caused his steps to become lighter and not produce the slight metallic thumps that he had grown used to while exploring the vast tunnel system.

Looking back, Frank thought about heading back into the old and abandoned metal tunnels that he had come from. Tunnels that were clearly created by humans, and leaving behind the cave system he now found himself in.

A quick glance showed him that the cave system had been touched by man at one point as well, as the stones were cut too sharply, the lines and edges too smooth to be naturally made. Yet, there was clearly something foreboding about the area he was in.

However, this area seemed to have an even greater abundance of energy motes available than the shafts did.

Pausing, he looked from the shafts and then turned back to the metal tunnels and wondered if the energy from the caverns was what ultimately fed into metal tunnels, or if there was something more going on.

Frank didn’t want to stray too far from his clear exit, and for good reason, as there was a clear pooling of energy motes immediately near the tunnel exit, then a long empty patch, and finally a spot further down, where Frank could just make out lights from other sources of energy. Energy that all but glowed green from a distance, energy that seemed to call out and resonate with dormant parts of Frank’s soul. At least that is what he thought as he looked on.

Seeing all the green motes of energy, Frank realized why he was ultimately drawn in this pathway, as the stream of motes with green cores slowly seemed to increase the further this way he went. It had been an unconscious gesture to follow the stream of energy, but now that hew as here, he could feel power all around him. Power that all but called out to him, daring him to take it for himself.

Slow breathing.

Frank let out slow measured breaths, not wanting to charge into anything, but then decided that he would finish up here first. He would sift through the motes of energy that were immediately by the only known exit he had, and see if he could at least understand a few things.

First, why was this place abandoned? Second, why was there a gap in energy? Clearly there was a section of highly concentrated motes of wild energy, a long separation, and then tunnels that seemed to glow with energy to Frank’s advanced senses.

Slither.

Just as Frank was going through the motes of energy, Frank heard it, the long slow grinding sound of something big and long dragging over a smooth stone floor.

Hearing that, Frank paused. For an instant, he thought about darting back into the metal tunnels, but then paused as he realized that his feet would instantly make noise if he did that. Instead, he backed up slowly until he was just at the entrance of the tunnels, and then slowly he lowered himself to the floor, trying to create as low of a profile as possible. Then he waited.

Slither, slither.

And waited.

And waited, as time seemed to stand still.

Until finally, he saw it. A beast so big that it caused the hairs on the back of his neck to rise up in fright. A beast that glowed with so much bright green energy that Frank could suddenly see where the spike in green energy that he had been chasing all this time came from.

Pausing, he watched as the glowing creature finally emerged from the tunnel, that is when Frank reacted…