Zane was on his third respawn and increasingly at risk of losing his patience. The first time he went to introduce himself to the rest of the warren they had run him through with spears. The second time they had done it again to confirm Kiel’s story that Zane could indeed resurrect. And the third had apparently been just for fun.
Kobolds had a lot of pent up aggression towards humans. Finding one they could kill without consequences must have seemed like Christmas to the angry lizard men. This time, he was done playing nice.
Instead of coming out right after he respawned, Zane decided to wait for a bit. He wanted to throw them off their game, break up the routine they had settled into. With a spear in one hand and a sword strapped to his hip, Zane went to meet the mob that was waiting for him. They had piled up around the exit, but thankfully a few had gotten bored and returned home.
“Surprise, motherfuckers!” Zane called out as he charged into the receiving room. A chorus of yips and barks greeted him. He wasted no time smacking the shit out of the closest kobold with the side of his spear.
Once the first lizard man was down, he thrust backwards at the one who was trying to sneak up behind him. The butt of his wooden spear slammed into the unlucky kobold's solar plexus and laid him out on the hard packed ground of the cave.
Technically he was fighting with a handicap. Kiel had warned him against killing anyone. After all, few kobolds could resurrect like he could. But that wouldn't stop him from being as nasty and petty as possible.
A kobold warrior screeched out a high note as Zane's spear smacked him in the family jewels. Another got a boot in his ass and was propelled into his fellow warrior. They fell in a mass of tangled limbs and curses.
Zane was strong and his abilities gave him an edge, but he still died. There were too many attackers for him to hold off alone. That was how it always went as sheer numbers overpowered youthful enthusiasm.
Eventually he fell into a routine. Wake up, attempt to meditate, give up and start training instead, fight, die, repeat. Kiel had moved on after saying something cryptic about Zane needing to train and get stronger, so the young man was forced to figure things out on his own. His attempts to run past the defenders had ended in disaster as they cornered him and went in for the kill.
The young man considered his options. He was gaining experience and had level ups available, but he didn't have enough essence for any meaningful upgrades. Accepting the levels without any essence to spend would stunt his growth.
He knew that there were ways to absorb and distill essence from the world around him. Kiel called that meditation based cultivation. As Zane contemplated the teachings of his master, he found himself wondering something vaguely heretical.
Essence was a natural resource. It was all around him, like the air he breathed. If that was true, there was no reason he had to be sitting still to absorb it. There were probably bonuses to efficiency if someone was absolutely focused on the process. But he didn't need perfect conversion. He only needed enough to let him buy some new abilities.
Kiel had been very vague on how the process worked. He said it was like breathing. You pulled in essence from the world around you, condensed it down and pressed it into your essence core, then repeated the process until you reached saturation.
In low essence areas like the warren, there was only so much that could be absorbed before the process stalled. He couldn't hang out forever and fill his essence for free. But maybe there would be enough for him to get something good when he leveled up.
Zane started a series of experiments. He could vaguely sense the essence in the air. It looked like rainbow colored lightning bugs floating on the air currents. When he tried to grab them with his hands, they danced out of reach. Some fragments of essence stuck to his skin, but he didn't seem to get any benefit from them.
When he sucked them into his lungs they were captured, but not absorbed. He could sense the unprocessed essence floating around inside of him. Zane knew this was the part where his teacher would meditate and condense the glowing sparks down to something useful.
That was the tricky bit, sitting still long enough for his body to absorb it. Whenever he tried, his mind would wander and release its hold on the wild essence. But eventually, inspiration struck him.
One of Zane’s many jobs had involved working in an industrial kitchen. He wasn't great at science or math, they required more concentration than he was usually capable of. But he was good with his hands and could follow a recipe.
One of the problems with large refrigerators was that water condensed on the cold side of the heat exchanger. Eventually it would ice up and need to be defrosted. If he could somehow replicate that effect, perhaps he could condense down the wild essence.
Zane could cause minor fluctuations in temperature by harnessing energy from his lower core. But accidentally freezing his lungs sounded unpleasant, so he started outside his body.
He paced back and forth, attempting to make a super chilled sphere of air. It took most of his energy, but he managed to make something cold enough to give him frostbite if he touched it. Unfortunately, it had no effect on the wild essence.
Still, Zane felt like he was onto something. He did his morning exercises and pondered the problem. It took too long for him to absorb the essence normally. He got distracted and released his grip on it too soon. Wait… my grip?
He reached out towards a random floating bit of essence and commanded it to move. It did as it was told and darted towards him. A smile crossed Zane's lips as he gathered more essence. But it quickly turned to a frown.
There was a sort of equilibrium. As soon as the concentration of essence in his lungs reached a certain point, he couldn't cram any more in there. It felt like trying to spit water back up a garden hose. There was too much pressure. And like before, his attempts to absorb the essence failed miserably.
It took him a week to figure out how to apply the two concepts together. Zane found that he could use energy from his lower core to cool the essence in his lungs before he condensed it down. This seemed to make the whole process much quicker. Soon, he was rewarded with his first trickle of distilled essence.
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Zane grinned. Now that he knew where to start, he could continue to refine his technique. Soon he would have enough essence to buy the abilities he needed to defeat the kobolds. And then, he would be free.
***
Zane punched the wall with frustration. His ability to condense essence from the world around him had stalled out. He needed ten points worth to buy the better upgrades, but he was hitting a wall at five. That was enough to buy something, but not the really good abilities that he wanted.
The problem seemed to boil down to pressure. He couldn't overcome the resistance from what was already inside him, no matter how hard he tried to force it. His cooling trick had helped, but it could only do so much.
The young man tried to diagnose the problem. His assumption was that essence was like air. It could only be compressed so much before the pump stalled out or the container exploded. Zane considered this for a moment.
Could he somehow increase the size of whatever was holding the essence inside of him? he wondered. That would certainly lower the overall pressure and let him cram more inside.
Zane turned his gaze inward as he went through the steps of his weapons training. He could sense eight distinct nexuses of energy within him. The three strongest ones were near his head, heart, and navel. Kiel had said they were his cores. The other five were in his hands, feet, and genitals, those were called something else he couldn’t remember.
The novels he had read in the before times spoke of qi and cores, meridians and channels. Essence was obviously the local equivalent of qi. But how someone could have more than one “core” was a mystery to Zane.
The young man wondered if it was a linguistic quirk. He wasn't well versed in medicine or religion (or much of anything for that matter), but perhaps some kind of cultural cross pollination was occurring. Maybe what they referred to as cores were more like chakras? Or perhaps they would undergo a transformation as he progressed? It was hard to tell.
Essence seemed to be concentrated in the nexus near Zane’s heart, his essence core, or whatever it was. He could feel it pulsing with flickering white light. Zane realized that if he controlled his breathing, he could slow down or speed up the strange rhythmic pulsing. The ball of essence contracted and expanded with each breath.
It was incredibly dangerous and stupid for a novice like Zane to try modifying his essence core. But he was functionally immortal and lacked the self control to stop himself. Needless to say, his first attempt did not go well. As Zane tried to stretch and expand the core in his chest, cracks began to form. A few seconds later the core detonated.
***
Normally, Zane was perfectly rested when he respawned. But today he felt like absolute dog shit. His chest was bruised and his head was spinning. The young man forced himself to stand up and wobbled his way over to the practice room. Apparently messing with his essence core had lingering consequences.
Sluggishly Zane began to refill his essence core. It went quickly at first. His theory about pressure was vindicated as the resistance slowly increased. But to his surprise, he was able to force an additional point of essence into it before he needed to stop.
The young man sighed, then started working to expand his essence core again. Eventually he exploded, but at least this time it was intentional.
***
Zane didn't know how many times he had woken up in the dark. He had lost track long ago. Sometimes the kobolds killed him, other times it was his own fault. But the results were the same, an endless loop of training and fighting that ended in darkness.
Occasionally other kobolds appeared in the awakening chamber with him. They filled Zane in on what was going on in the world then wished him luck with his cultivation before they departed. Apparently his existence was a kind of open secret among the kobolds.
His mood might have suffered if he hadn't continued making improvements. His essence core had expanded to hold ten points worth before he couldn't cram anymore inside, enough to finally buy the upgrades he wanted. But that too hit a snag.
Once the essence was spent, it was gone forever. His refinement of the wild essence slowed down dramatically with each purchase as the ambient levels dropped. Finally, he pulled the last of it from the air and looked around dumbly at the empty chamber. The rainbow fireflies of wild essence were gone, all used up. Thankfully, it had been enough.
Zane sat down and interfaced with the Mesh. He had started his journey with nothing, then advanced to level three with Kiel’s help. Levels four and five had been easy, and he had gotten a significant boost as he went up to tier two.
He had just reached level ten. That put him solidly in the third tier. Initially, the lack of essence had held him back. But now he was starting to have trouble leveling. Apparently smacking around kobolds until they killed him wasn't a good way to grind experience.
Interestingly enough, whenever he advanced to a new tier it allowed him to double dip on abilities. He could purchase them again to get an even bigger boost. Zane inspected his stats.
> Name: Zane
>
> Level: 10
>
> Tier: 3
>
> Race: Kobold
>
> Class: Chef
>
> Abilities: Cat’s Grace x2, Fox’s Swiftness x3, Chef’s Tools x2, Kobold’s Regeneration, Trickster's Mind, Sorcery Initiate,
>
> Divine Blessings: Dragon’s Courage, Cat’s Confidence, Fox’s Charm
Zane had gained the opportunity to purchase more new abilities at tier two. Trickster's Mind allowed him to draw on his lower core to seem more convincing, while calling his attention to important details he might have otherwise missed. Sorcery Initiate gave him access to some basic spells like Light, Shield, and Shadow Jump.
But Fox’s Swiftness was the real icing on the cake. He finished his morning exercises and selected a spear from the wall. The kobolds outside replenished them each time he was defeated. He had tried talking to them, but they shied away as if someone had told them not to.
That seemed odd to Zane. The kobolds who occasionally respawned in the cave with him were pleasant enough. They knew who he was and even occasionally agreed to pass on messages for him. They apparently never did, because his requests for Kiel to let him out or call off the other kobolds had fallen on deaf ears.
He took a deep breath and started to draw on his core to reinforce the spear. Then he stopped and set the weapon aside. Zane was tired of fighting with a spear. He used his Chef's Tools ability and concentrated on summoning something else. Something new.
With each new tier his ability to summon objects related to his class had improved. The small paring knife he had started out with had turned into a full sized chef knife at tier two.
This time, two long knives materialized in his hands. Zane looked at the long thin blades in amazement. They were each as long as his arm with white wooden handles and a faint rainbow shimmer. His class told him that these were called Sakimaru Takohiki, a variant of the knives used to prepare octopus.
Zane gave them an experimental twirl and swore as he accidentally sliced his own ear. He sighed and put them away while he waited for the wound to heal. Reluctantly, he grabbed the spear and prepared to meet the Kobolds. There was no point in bringing a weapon he didn't know how to use.
Then again, Zane thought as he looked at the spear, There's no reason I can't make improvements.
He replaced the spearhead with one of the long magic knives and bound it into place. There was no doubt in his mind that the magical weapon was superior to the mundane metal it had replaced. He grinned. It was time to try out his new toy.