Thoroughly unhappy with how many fires he was being forced to put out, Jennings clenched his teeth in anger and narrowed his eyes at what he was seeing.
His attention was being split between a conversation being routed through the local mage tower to Hennings’ mage council, his observation of the conversation going on between Nero’s adherents and potential followers, the discussion between the evaluators and the local order of knight’s grandmaster, and the Dorchester Council of Leadership’s emergency meeting. Yet, it was the stupidity of the nobles that was currently occupying most of his available mental strength.
‘These idiots are going to get themselves killed. Either the populators are going to be sent back out, or I’ll be forced to do it myself,’ he complained to himself.
“I really don’t have time for this,” he growled while increasing how much attention he was applying to his current task.
Hovering up near the ceiling of the central chamber, his hands waved in complicated patterns like a conductor, urging the essence flows to resume their standardized pattern. It was more than a little difficult to fix what Nero had broken, but it was within his capabilities.
Frowning in annoyance, he struggled to get the connections right. The ethereal plane was simply refusing to cooperate with him.
Fed up, he ripped apart the poorly aligned essence flows and started again. He needed to get the essence flowing back the way it should, and to do that, everything needed to be connected… orderly… calm.
What Nero had done was anything but orderly. The young man had practically diverted every major essence flow into one place, jumbling them together like a hodge podge of every drink in his bar. Had he not been watching closely, the result could have been disastrous. And, it nearly had been.
Luckily, he’d gotten here quickly enough to stop things from getting out of hand. The last thing Dorchester needed was a planar rip or a sub-plane forming from the collapsed essence flows.
As he couldn’t teleport into the area, he’d had to fly here. And by the time he’d arrived, the material plane had been barely hanging on. The local reality had nearly failed to rematerialize. ‘Such incomprehensible power,’ he thought to himself in awe at the memory of how badly things had looked.
Although he knew how it had happened, and he could easily reproduce the result just with his own center, that didn’t make the feat any less extraordinary. For a barely trained mage like Lord Walker to accomplish something so grand, it was nearly incomprehensible.
He was really going to have to sit the young man down and explain some things. There was letting the young man grow on his own and then there was letting the young man rip apart reality as if he were a troll in a furniture shop. There had to be some limits.
‘But first, I need to get the ether back under control,’ he reminded himself.
After stabilizing things, he’d been able to quickly go back to Dorchester and grab the grandmaster, basically shoving the memory engram of what he’d witnessed into the poor man’s head. Luckily, the man was at a high enough level to handle it. After all, at the time, he hadn’t had many options. Hopefully, his study of the man’s character would prove itself accurate. It would be much easier to let the grandmaster handle the politics than to get involved himself.
Noticing something odd, he focused on a particular area of the disturbed essence. ‘What have we here?’ he wondered.
Implanting his perception into the essence flows, he found his mind reviewing the word’s memory of what had occurred at the center of the explosion.
Widening his eyes in shock, he nearly lost control of the multiple minds he was using to watch over everything.
He watched in awe as Nero’s body held itself together under the protection of a conceptual essence shield that had somehow been given a material identity. He himself hadn’t been able to accomplish that level of enchanting until he’d reached level 80. Watching closely, he saw Nero’s soul detach itself from the body it was using, poking at it like he was testing whether or not it was still worth bothering with.
Then, incomprehensibly, the soul dove back in, funneling the raw unfiltered essence floating around it into the body in waves. At the time, the ethereal and material planes were overlapping, so ‘reality’ was nothing more than a polite suggestion, and Nero’s soul took advantage of that fact. Jennings wasn’t able to follow exactly what the soul did, but he could tell it was something significant.
Suddenly, like a leveling event resulting in a pillar, the body, mind, and soul snapped into place. The body resumed functioning, forcing itself back into reality as if the world’s opinion no longer mattered. The mind resumed working like normal, and Nero was alive again.
‘Did I just witness an actual self-actualization? I thought that was only possible for higher-tier demons, gods, or conceptual beings that forced their way into our plane of existence. That’s… not possible. If he could do that, then why did he even bother with a body at all?’ he wondered to himself in confusion.
That confusion turned into happiness at the realization of what the young anomaly was capable of.
“Fascinating,” he muttered, before rewatching the event through careful delving into the world’s memory while making a careful record of the memory engram for later study.
While doing so, his attention was pulled by the Council of Leadership arguing over the wording they would be using for their formal complaint through the Tower of Law. Through the scry, he watched Mage-adept Newbanks rubbing her temples in pain at the headache these idiots were causing her.
He’d have to buy her a gift to make up for forcing her to sit in on the meeting… maybe some chocolates or something. Everyone likes chocolates.
Feeling the essence flows he’d just fixed slipping back out of alignment, he growled in frustration and got back to work. Glancing over at the area where the memory of what Nero had done was currently dissipating, he couldn’t help but sigh and hope it would remain long enough for him to get everything he needed.
While he admitted that the anomaly was worth it, he had to admit the young man’s potential was almost overshadowed by the trouble he consistently caused.
-----
Nero leaned back on the surprisingly comfortable cot, glancing around the tent. He had to admit, these Dorchester commanders knew how to live it up in the field. While this particular section of the tent wasn’t all that spacious, it was rather well thought out.
There was a pleasant overhead light that was both warm and inviting. In the corner of the small space was a large mirror and a multipurpose cabinet/desk and chair. There was even a small meditation mat, complete with a potted plant and a tiny wooden rack for incense. While not an incense-guy, Nero could appreciate that the rack came pre-loaded, ready for a light.
This small room was one of many in the giant tent, and he could only assume the quiet ambiance was the work of some kind of privacy enchantment. ‘There is no way canvas walls should make a person feel this isolated,’ he thought to himself.
After removing his clean, but thoroughly trashed armor, he brought out one of his barrels of water from his personal space in order to give himself a towel bath. Despite being clean as a whistle due to his magic, he still felt like he needed a shower.
He tossed his turned off link onto the desk and took a good look at himself in the mirror.
Standing there naked, he frowned in thought at his reflection. Seeing how messed up he looked, he was once again surprised at how little his current appearance was affecting him. Although he looked like a malnourished heroin addict auditioning for a backup role in some poorly thought-out teen vampire movie, he just couldn’t seem to muster up enough emotional strength to care.
There was no identity crisis or sense of loss. Instead, when he looked at himself in the mirror, all he could think about was how cliche he looked. ‘I really am just driving a meat suit, aren’t I,’ he remarked to himself while grinning at his reflection and trying out heartthrob poses in the mirror.
After a minute or two, he got bored and decided to stop goofing around.
Laying down on the cot, he folded his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. He tried to remember the last time he had meditated or dealt with the experience currently burning away in his center. Unfortunately, after having lost track of the days, he truly had no idea. Too much had happened.
Done stalling, he let his mind sink into his center, returning to his inner world.
Feeling like he’d walked out of the house into news coverage during a Floridian hurricane, Nero winced at the sight of so many hovering memories playing out in front of him. While on some level he’d expected some changes, he felt himself sighing at how screwed up everything looked.
The sky was filled with red and angry clouds. Harsh winds ripped through the forest around him, making it feel like he was on the edge of a cyclone. The sound of rustling leaves and creaking branches overpowered the whispering assault coming from each memory fighting for his attention. His spiritual ‘face’ winced in pain at the needle-like rain pellets covering him in warm water.
The stones under his feet had become hidden under mud and debris. The metaphor of him no longer having a path forward almost made him laugh out loud. ‘If I ever needed proof that my inner self is a dweeb, then this is it. Only someone who spent their entire life mockingly learning psychology through web articles and memes could come up with something so overbearing and played out,’ he told himself.
Rolling his shoulders, he was about to dig in when he noticed something odd on the edges of the memory storm. It looked like the memories out there were being stripped of something, almost losing their color. ‘So that’s what happens when I don’t review and incorporate my experiences fast enough. These spiritual representations are getting a little obvious,’ he complained.
After taking a moment to feel bad about how much experience he must have wasted, he pulled forward the first memory and let himself get lost in the sensations.
Like a surfer biting it on a neverending wave, he let the memories wash over him.
While being assaulted by scenes of his acid-melting kobald bombs, he thought to himself, ‘I really should have checked my identity panel before I got into this.’
On and on it went, in no particular order. He saw himself healing soldiers with an intense look on his face. Flashes of crying soldiers hugging him while muttering their thanks. Stern faced men and women marching forward into battle. Skies turned into auroras by falling spells splashing against multicolored shields. Quiet conversations with Nick about magic and its application.
On more than one occasion, he caught himself surprised at things he either hadn’t noticed or simply forgotten about.
He felt the experiences seep into his center, refining his identity like a washing machine stripping off soap scum and grime. But it was more than that. Like always, the more memories he went through, the stronger his sense of self became.
He saw himself clenching his fists in anger at the sight of Captain Angleton and the penal soldiers being overrun. He listened to his impassioned speech which he now realized sounded better in his head.
Throughout it all, he saw the men and women around him growing more respectful of his presence. He could feel their emotions becoming more loyal as the battle progressed. Comparing the later emotional state of the ether all around him as the scenes of battle bounced around the timeline made it clear that his actions were having an effect on the people around him.
He honestly hadn’t noticed how many people had been watching him, each one silently judging and interpreting his actions through their own personal worldviews. While he had just been going around, doing his thing, people had noticed.
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Images of him ripping through the kobald lines while he aided that good-looking woman and her unit flashed across his vision like a fever dream. Watching how he tore into the kobalds like a storm of steel was both invigorating and kind of cool. ‘I guess I can be a bit of a badass,’ he thought to himself in surprise.
Unfortunately, there were just as many scenes of him doing stupid shit to keep his ego in check.
He remembered his ill-thought-out attempt at spell-form alteration. The feeling of melting half his face off with his flamethrower spell reminded him how much he still had to learn.
By the time he dove into the memories of his race through the kobald encampment and his many close calls, he was thoroughly exasperated with himself. ‘I’d always known I was a little reckless, but holy shit can I be an idiot.’
The memory of his spell explosion hit him in the face like a sack of oranges, almost knocking him out of his mental fugue.
He watched in awe at how the world around him melted into the ether. Kobalds, spell stone, armor, it all broke apart beyond the molecular level. With his expanded senses, he watched himself floating in the ether, surrounded by his struggling mage armor, barely surviving the aftermath. He winced at the sight of his body losing its color, his fat and muscle vanishing as if he were rapidly aging.
Then… nothing. Well, not nothing, but it looked like the memory glitched. He could feel that something was happening, but couldn’t tell what it was. It was like watching a drunken blackout happen in real time. He was sure he was doing something, but he had no idea what. The memory seemed to warp and shake, as if time temporarily lost any meaning. There was a sense that something important was happening, but his mind wasn’t able to accurately interpret it.
‘It’s like that time I was eating a greasy hangover breakfast, missing a shoe, cowering in regret and shame, remembering for a fact that I had hooked up with Christina Morris, but not having any idea why or where I was when I did it, all the while, positive that it both happened and that everyone knew about it,’ he noted angrily.
Without warning, the memory resumed playing, showing him hovering in a gray and blank world, his mage armor slowly failing while his passed-out body floated like a buoy in the water. Finally, the ether stabilized, and the essence flows returned to their somewhat normal state. The ground below him reappeared as his mage armor finally gave out, fading into the ether like smoke.
‘Well, that was closer than I thought it was,’ he admitted to himself uncomfortably.
The rest of the memories flashed forward at a much faster rate, seamlessly inserting themselves into his psyche. He recalled that at the time, his muted emotions made the world seem dull and uninteresting, but now, looking back, he could tell that he hadn’t actually missed anything.
Although, he was now able to notice how his utter annihilation of the kobalds had affected the soldiers’ perception of him. Whatever respect they’d had for him before had morphed into reverence and awe. It was a little humbling to watch it happen from this unique perspective.
Around him in the inner world, he felt the storm calming down, the clouds above him parting and allowing some sunlight through. Beneath him, the cobbled stone path was back under his feet, stretching into the distance once again.
There was an overwhelming sense that he’d come through something profound… like he’d survived a trial or something, narrowly avoiding some dire fate. The sensation made the back of his neck itch in irritation. ‘It was nothing more than a battle with a bunch of stupid lizards. Nothing to feel all bent out of shape about,’ he reminded himself mockingly.
After looking around to confirm he hadn’t missed anything, he opened his identity panel to see how he did.
Name
Nero Walker
Level
16
Race
Human
Growth
12%
Tier
1
Condition
100%
Age
14
Center
100%
Body
4
Mind
5
Soul
2
Confluence
11
Stars
0
Pillars
3/ 1
Body
4
Base
Operative
Level Stress
Presence
22
39.6
22.6
Durability
26
46.8
31.8
Recovery
47
84.6
19.6
Speed
25
45
36.3
Adaptability
47
84.6
28.1
Power
24
43.2
18.4
Mind
5
Base
Operative
Level Stress
Weight
32
64
19.3
Control
39
78
28.7
Field
36
72
43.6
Precision
55
110
38.5
Endurance
65
130
39.9
Focus
61
122
49.9
Soul
2
Base
Operative
Level Stress
Size
29
40.6
7.1
Density
101
141.4
13.2
Intensity
76
106.4
18.6
Pressure
27
37.8
15.9
Harmony
24
33.6
49.9
Adaptability
270
378
14.8
Nero put his hands on his hips and stared at the identity panels in anger. He’d leveled? When did he level? And when did he apply his star to his pillar?
‘Well… this is some bullshit,’ he complained to himself.
Opening the panel for his pillar, he brought up the details to see what had changed, hoping it would offer him some answers.
Pillars
Adaptation
Stars Assigned:
3
Increased ability to handle level stress
* 2
Increased ability to harmonize your attributes
* 1
Frowning in annoyance, he reread the limited blurb about his new ‘ability’ over and over again.
‘Harmonize my attributes? What the fuck does that mean?’ he wondered angrily.
Running his hand through his hair in frustration, he looked around at the pleasant-looking forest, still glistening in that way forests due after a good storm. The puddles of water reflected the shafts of sunlight quite beautifully but didn’t elicit anything positive in him. Instead, the charming sight only further inflamed his fury at having been screwed out of a star.
He had needed that star to fix his body. He didn’t want to continue walking around like a corpse. Granted, he wasn’t all that attached to his good looks, but he still didn’t know what effect his condition would have on his combat capabilities.
Exhaling sharply into the air, he looked up into the sky and tried to force himself to calm down. ‘OK… I can figure this out,’ he said to himself reassuringly.
Thinking back to what he’d learned about this world's dumbass terminology, he tried to remember what he learned about ‘harmony’. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all that much. All he could recall was that it had to do with his soul's ability to interact with the world.
Starting from there, he could make a few guesses.
For one, ‘harmonization’ between his attributes probably had something to do with what Nick was always going on about… His body, mind, and soul needed to stay in sync. Confluence was the term they used for how well everything connected. But, Nero remembered that Nick had mentioned the term ‘unity’ when Jennings had been explaining Nero’s body hijacking.
Considering how he’d practically vaporized himself with his spell, perhaps his body auto-utilized the star to keep his body together.
Widening his eyes, he realized it may have been much more than that. If his soul was basically ‘him’, and he was slowly developing his mind and body with its presence, then it made sense that speeding up that process would help keep his identity together.
Maybe he shouldn’t be all that upset. It’s entirely possible that he had made the decision, and he just couldn’t currently remember it. He knew that his soul could act on its own, as it had when he’d commandeered the body he was currently wearing. So, conceivably, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.
‘Maybe my mind wasn’t capable of integrating the memories for some reason. At the time, reality was a pool of unrealized essence, so the fact that my body held together at all should be considered a win,’ he said to himself comfortingly.
Closing the annoying identity windows, Nero harshly blew out a lungful of air, feeling more than done with the confusing question of what had actually happened. Whatever it was, he’d deal with it eventually. Besides, his body would recover on its own. And if it didn’t, then he’d just have to use the next level’s star to fix it. There really was no point in stressing about it.
Releasing his presence from his inner world, his senses returned to the tent he was currently staying in.
Opening his eyes, he looked around to see the room exactly as he’d left it, confirming that the level hadn’t happened while he was busy going through his memories.
Frowning in thought, he stood up from the bed trying to come to grips with the question that had just come to mind.
‘If I only just now incorporated the experiences from the past few days, then how did I already use that experience to level? Shouldn’t levels happen AFTER I do the whole memory thing?’ he thought to himself in confusion.
Standing there naked in the middle of his little room, he glanced over at his reflection in the mirror.
Dropping his jaw in shock, he saw that his body had somehow returned to normal. His shiny silver hair was back, along with his abs and healthy muscles. In his reflection, bright blue eyes met his, the confusion evident on his face.
Louder than a standard mutter, he nearly shouted, “What the ever-living fuck! Am I ever going to understand how this leveling shit works?!? This world is bullshit! It doesn’t make any God-damn sense! I swear -”
Nero threw the mother of all hissy fits, flailing his fists around and kicking the air like he was determined to beat the shit out of the very air. Completely forgetting about his need for rest, thoroughly losing it, his epic rant went on for a good long while.