Chapter 15
Justin woke up feeling like he could take on the world. It almost seemed like he’d been fighting some kind of sickness his whole life, and he had woken up having finally beaten it. It was like nothing would ever make him sick again. He was willing to bet he could drink a gallon or two of hard alcohol and not have a hangover the next day. He’d also probably never have to worry about allergies again.
A blinking message icon in the corner of his vision caught his attention. As soon as he focused on it, a system message popped up.
Level 5 Attained!
You have successfully advanced an attribute to your specie’s unaided maximum!
Your species' natural urge to mate and pass on your DNA has been activated.
Your Body has become overloaded with (Life) energy!
For the next 24 hours you will experience a significantly enhanced sex drive.
Quest Chain Awarded: Dual Cultivation!
Seek out a suitable partner within the next 24 hours and practice dual cultivation, exchanging your Yang for their Yin. Alternatively erect a containment barrier around your Yang core.
Warning: Failure to complete this quest will result in death.
Rewards: [system initiates guidebook], Access to system shop
Possible additional rewards: [Yang core] [dual cultivators bond] +1 level, offspring
Countdown timer [15:48:22]
Justin felt a deep sense of unease about the message and the quest it was awarding. He glanced around, trying to get his bearings. He seemed to be in some kind of temporary field hospital. Several Army cots were laid out in a 12 man tent, some occupied and others not. Justin recognized most of the others as members of one platoon or another from Savage Company. Thankfully there weren’t any “suitable dual cultivation partners” around.
Justin felt a bit of anger at his superiors. Shouldn’t they have been warned about this quest? What about the men who had wives, or the woman who had husbands? Was the system going to force them to cheat? Justin also felt a slight stab of guilt. He’d been dating a young lady who lived close to the base, but they’d broken up slightly before the system and the Ice elves sent the world into a downward spiral. He hadn’t thought about her since the incident at the gate. He wondered if she was okay.
He wasn’t sure if it was the system messing with him, or something else, but he found himself remembering her sparkling blue eyes and dazzling smile. Most of the other guys in his MP unit had given him crap for finding her attractive for reasons other than her tits or ass. Another spark of guilt hit him and he decided he wouldn’t let the system dictate who he loved, or when. He’d figure out this [Yang Core] bull shit or die trying!
Justin had listened to Sargent Hernandez discuss his latest Wuxia progression litrpg novel obsession often enough to have some ideas on how he might go about building a core. He first adjusted himself on the cot he’d woken on. The thing smelled absolutely horrible, but he wasn’t willing to risk leaving the tent, not with the system messing with his senses and emotions.
Sitting cross legged, he focused on finding a sense of calm and peace deep inside. He’d had a bit of experience with meditation before, so he had an idea of how hard this would be. He did his best to ignore the thoughts intruding on him, and when he finally found some silence, he focused on imagining himself sitting inside a white square.
Once he’d accomplished that, he began to turn off his senses, one at a time. This was the part he’d always struggled with before. The process was made 10 times harder with his system enhancements, and an awareness of the life energy filling him. He would have given up, since this was all just his first idea on forming a core, but even without being able to see the system messages, he still got a sense of accomplishment when he’d succeeded in mentally forming the white box and starting to shut out his senses.
His sense of time went first, followed by his sense of smell and touch. He wanted to exclude these first in case someone walked in on him. He knew from past experience, being touched or smelling someone would easily break his concentration, and he didn’t have time to be interrupted.
After his sense of touch had been excluded from entering the white square, the other senses went somewhat faster. Without a sense for the passage of time, Justin only knew he needed to complete this as quickly as he was able. At this point he was mostly operating on instinct, some force guiding him as he added a black square outside the white one in his mind’s eye. The Black box was set at a crosspoint with the white one, so that the corners of the white box just touched the center of the lines making up the black one. Outside of that a white circle and a black circle were added, and then, with a vague sense of surprise, a black and white yin-yang symbol, with Justin at the exact center formed.
As the images began to slowly spin around his mental avatar, Justin realized he could feel the life energy emanating from his body. Each layer of the mental image seemed to contain progressively more of that energy with each rotation. Realizing what was happening, he began to focus on increasing the rotational speed of the images. At first, nothing happened. Justin felt like if he didn’t figure out how to increase the rotational speed, eventually enough life energy would leak out of him, and he’d die. He suddenly understood why failing this system assignment would result in death.
The system fundamentally changed people, and as a by-product, they gained greater longevity. Something about the system was stimulating his cells, allowing them to repair damage faster and live longer, without developing cancerous deviations in his DNA. He’d have to process this realization later, since right now, in his current state, he doubted he’d really understand or process things the way he would if he weren't so focused on trying to form a core..
The realization had him take a deep breath in surprise. Even though he’d somewhat separated himself from his senses, he realized that the mental avatar in his mind’s eye was somewhat tied to his actual body, so he could still somewhat recognize what was happening to him in a detached and logical way.
Justin realized that taking that deep breath had caused the layers of his mental landscape to speed up, progressing whatever was happening. He quickly realized he needed to control his breathing if he was going to be successful at this. However, if he tried to control his breathing consciously, he had a premonition that told him he would lose his progress.
Justin’s cold logical mind began considering ideas, forming and then quickly discarding them when he realized they wouldn’t work. He knew there was some way to do what he needed, but he just wasn’t sure what it was. As he processed ideas, a small part of him that had been focusing on the life energy escaping him noticed something else. Not only was life energy escaping his body, it seemed to be escaping from his chest more specifically, then filling his body, before finally escaping. He decided to watch this process a bit more closely to see if he could gain any clues about what was happening.
As he began to focus more and more on the mental avatar, he realized it had become almost transparent. He could see his bones, as well as his veins, heart, brain, and some other organs. A second set of veins was slowly forming, these ones pumping a golden energy through them. He realized that each breath he took was causing the veins to further develop, closely following the pathways his blood veins took.
He had a feeling that if these veins reached his skin, all the golden energy would leak out in a single breath, and he’d die, however, the more fully developed these pathways were, the better he would be able to control this energy in the future.
Justin quickly began to wonder where the golden energy veins had originated. His view of his bod changed slightly as he began following the largest veins, and soon he realized there was a small cloud of golden gas, hidden just under his heart in the center of his body. It was above his gut, and between his lungs.
The golden cloud seemed to be spinning at the same speed as the projected images outside himself. That made some degree of sense, as this golden cloud seemed to be Justin’s life force in a way. It was a bit diffuse, which he kind of expected. He was still a young man, and wasn’t sure how his life would go. It made sense that his life force would be a bit spread out rather than being a bar of tungsten that he would expect from someone like First Sergeant Cabral.
Having found the source of the veins, but not having come up with any good ideas to help him speed his breathing, he was about to focus back outside his mental avatar. Just as his perception began to shift away from that area of his body, Justin noticed the cloud pulse. The shock wave seemed to affect his lungs, air tinged with golden energy flowing outward in a whoosh. As a result, he found himself taking a deep breath.
Receiving a spark of inspiration, Justin tried forming a sort of plate of mental energy inside his lungs. Then, he carefully began to force air out, by running the mental energy from the bottom of his lungs to the top, similar to a piston in a modern fuel engine. He’d pull air back in by pushing the plate back down, and after a couple of seconds, he’d repeat the process. As he worked on this process, he noticed a definitive change in the environment of his mind. More and more of the life energy that was escaping his body was being trapped by the mental layers, and as the rotational speed increased, the layers began to shrink.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
At first Justin was quite satisfied, but he began to realize that as the layers of the diagram, which his mental avatar sat in, shrunk, the veins filled with golden energy accelerated their questing reach for his skin. If he wasn’t able to control the process a bit better, he would end up with either sub-optimal vein structure, or he’d die. He much preferred living, so at first he started to slow down his breathing a bit, trying to make it more rhythmic. This helped somewhat, but he still felt he was missing something.
Then Justin remembered something he’d discussed with SFC Ming. He’d heard that the Chinese national practiced a lot of different kinds of martial arts, and he’d wondered if she might have any tips on meditation. He’d been initially disappointed when she told him she didn’t actually meditate, but that she had heard about a kind of martial art that was much more a form of meditation. Eventually, after years of daily practice, a master of the form would react in a certain way when their heart rate or breathing accelerated to a certain point, such as during a fight. Basically practitioners spent years and years developing muscle memory and when they sped up, the motions became quite deadly. Mostly Justin had been interested in the supposed health effects. Jennet had told him the practitioners reported better blood flow, and increased energy.
In the moment, Justin was interested in the blood flow aspect. If he could perform some kind of physical action to gain better control of the golden energy, he might be able to control the process better and not kill himself. He hadn’t really done much other than a cursory google search into the martial art, called “tai chi”, but he knew that most of the actions were about carefully controlled large sweeping motions, ones that focused on maintaining balance while transferring or shifting his weight.
The mental avatar in Justin’s head stood up and began, very slowly, to move, almost as if it were dancing. The motions didn’t really feel right, but combined with the breathing, they did have an effect. Noticing this, he kept going, slightly changing his movements looking for ways to improve the efficiency. The golden energy veins seemed to respond as much to the motion as they did to his breathing, but he could tell they were slightly out of sync. He knew if he could get them in sync, he could control the process, and make sure he didn’t die. If not… well, that was a chance he didn’t want to take if he could avoid it.
Justin had another spark of inspiration, realizing that actual tai chi was supposed to emulate the moves one made in a street fight, with fists and feet. Instead of dancing, what if he instead focused on fighting?
Justin had some practice with hand to hand combat, mostly based on Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but that would be very hard to practice without a partner, and it just didn’t seem right to summon a partner into this mental space, especially since he was looking to avoid the need of having a partner.
Instead, Justin began to imagine himself on a modern battlefield. Alternating between sprinting and then crawling toward the enemy. He’d take a knee and mime firing rounds at imaginary enemies to cover for his team mates. This ended up feeling much more correct, and Justin soon lost himself in imaginary battlefields.
It was a bit difficult, since any time he thought about team members in this space, there was a bit of a mental disconnect, as though there was something preventing him from imagining them properly, but for some reason he didn’t feel a need to fix that issue now. The battlegrounds and fights in his mind changed, slowly at first but then more quickly. He imagined himself taking part in major historic battles from American history, and ones he imagined might come in the future. Something seemed to click within him, and he found himself standing, eyes wide open, sweating profusely outside the tent he’d woken in earlier. A system message welcomed his return to reality.
Congratulations!
You have completed the quest [Form a (Yang) core].
You’ve formed a high tier core, which reflects your path as a [Gunsworn guard]
You’ve been granted the following as rewards
[Yang Core of the Gunsworn Warrior (1)]
[System Initiate’s Guidebook]
[Soulbound energy gun (Yang Core)]
Access to [System Shop] nodes
+1 Level
Advanced Class [Gunsworn Warrior of the golden Yang Palace]
Justin decided to review his complete character sheet to assign the points from leveling to 6, and review the changes that’d come from reaching level 5.
Attribute
Score
Modifiers
Strength
8
+1
Dexterity
8
0
Constitution
11
-1
Intelligence
7
0
Wisdom
7
0
Charisma
7
+1
Luck
1
+1
Aggregate Stats
HP: 1,408
Stamina: 224
Mana: 171
Vitality: 38
Resistance: 24
Soul Storage
(Yang) Energy Core (I)
Skill Tokens (1)
Gear Tokens (1)
Attribute Points
Upgrade Points
Currency ($10,000 USD)
($100 USC*)
Other
SKILLS
ABILITIES
SPELLS
Awareness (I)
Endless Ammo
Bullet Hell
Gunslinging (II)
Teamwork makes the dream work
Yang Energy Field
Soul Energy Initiate (I)
(Yang) Energy Shield
Class
Advanced Class
Mastery
Gunsworn Guard
Gunsworn Warrior of the Yang Palace
Gunslinger
Levels
6
Class Features
Gunsworn Guard
A basic guard who uses guns
Gunsworn Warrior of the Yang Palace
A highly specialized warrior focusing on using energy guns that have a (Yang) aspect.
Gunslinger
Someone who specializes in using guns of one kind or another at close to mid range.
Justin felt somewhat overwhelmed. His HP alone was astonishing. He felt like he could survive basically anything short of a nuclear blast. The new skill, ability, and spell intrigued him as well. He wondered what exactly they would allow him to do. He also remembered the captain having several conversations within earshot about something happening at level 5. He knew he’d been unable to remember these conversations before, and he wondered how that’d happened.
He also couldn’t contain his excitement at the thought of accessing a [system store] node. He hadn’t heard of that before, other than in the initial welcome and training briefs while joining Savage Company, but he knew he’d be able to spend his skill and gear tokens there, as well as any system currency. He had also heard you could pay the system some credits and it would unlock a basic description of a given ability. He wondered if that would be worth it, but soon decided he had other things to focus on.
Having found himself already outside the field hospital tent, and knowing what other soldiers were going through upon waking, he decided he should quickly regroup with the company, and get a new assignment. After all, the Ice elf invasion was still taking place, and who knew how many civilians had been impacted so far.