CHAPTER 86 REDOUBLED EFFORTS

I feel on top of my game today. For some reason, despite the fight earlier, I feel great. Better than I have in a while. I wasn’t sure if it was directly affecting my level gains or not, more than likely not, but it allowed the time to pass by quickly and for me to make tons of progress. I wasn’t even feeling tired after over six hours of training.

So I just kept at it, I kept going and going. Occasionally I had to take some breaks and recover my mana but that was just another skill I was training.

After maybe ten hours of training I had to stop for another break. I was pretty sure this was my twentieth one so far as well.

‘Ping’ [Rest] Has leveled 4 > 7

‘Ping’ [Mana Sense] Has leveled 5 > 7

‘Ping’ [Electric Sense] Has leveled 5 > 7

‘Ping’ [Sword Apprentice] Has leveled 2 > 8

‘Ping’ [Wood Manipulation] Has leveled 17 > 12

‘Ping’ [Accelerated Thoughts] Has leveled 6 > 10

‘Ping’ [Fruit Production] Has leveled 3 > 15

‘Ping’ [Fatigue Resistance] Has leveled 13 > 21

‘Ping’ [Parallel Minds] Has leveled 5 > 7

‘Ping’ [Plant Production] Has leveled 7 > 71

‘Ping’ [Vegetable Production] Has leveled 7 > 31

Overall, some pretty hefty gains. I was very happy with the progress I had made so far. Even if it took ten hours to make this kind of progress, it was still pretty good. Tier two skills seemed to be pretty slow in their level gains, but it was just something I was going to have to deal with.

It was going to take a long time to get everything maxed, but such was the downfall of having to level grind. I had no doubt that it was going to be worth it in the end. My classes should hopefully be stronger. I had nothing to guarantee that other than a few vague remarks from people though.

I stretched a little once my mana topped itself back off. Ten hours and the people weren’t back from their shift yet. I must've been in one of the first fights last night. Made sense since I walked straight into the arena rather than being sent to the waiting room like last time.

I was starting to feel some exhaustion creep into my mind and body, but it was held significantly at bay by [Fatigue Resistance].

I had a little bit more in me, and I had another skill I wanted to try and grab. I’d been holding off on this for too long but it would most certainly come in handy.

I held out a hand in front of me and summoned a ball of lightning in my palm. It crackled and arced with volatile energy. The sparks had an almost purple hue rather than a blue or white that most people would expect.

It was entrancing. Holding an ephemeral beauty in the way it crackled and moved. I smiled as I watched it for a moment before shaking my head and focusing.

I slowly started to stretch the energy, trying to form shapes with it. It fought me every step of the way as I tried to make it do things it didn’t want to. Like forming a circle, or a triangle. A square was honestly the hardest one to form, but I eventually managed to get it.

I kept working at it, forming various shapes. Mainly sticking with two-dimensional images. It started to come more and more easily to me as I slowly figured out how to manipulate it. Get it to work with me rather than against me.

It was calming, in a way. Rather than a contest with death on the line, this felt more like a puzzle. Something I had to figure out with a level of ingenuity rather than trying to beat down and crush my opponent.

It also helped that the opponent was my own magic rather than someone seemingly hell-bent on killing me.

I tried to form an apple. I got there in the end… kind of. If you squinted and chose to pretend in your mind it looked like one anyways.

It was fun though. I enjoyed this kind of work apparently. Although I thought this might be boring if I didn’t gain levels to go along with it… Or so I thought it might.

A tangible visualization and crystallization of improvement certainly helped with motivation to work on bettering myself. I was kind of interested to see how it might represent my proficiency with other things that I had been good at in life. Although some of it might not qualify as general skills. Music might though. I had gotten decently far in that.

I was getting distracted again. I had my subminds all preoccupied with various activities right now, so I was the only one focusing on messing with the lightning in my hand.

I kept working and working, different, but mostly simple shapes are what I created. But those started to come pretty easily and I still haven't gotten a skill. I was starting to think there wasn’t one for lightning or electricity for some reason.

I decided to create a three-dimensional shape. If this didn’t work I would put it on the back-burner for now.

I decided to go with a cube. A square had been kind of hard to mold because of the sharp edges. A cube had the same issues but exemplified that problem by having more corners to manage. A suitable challenge for me to try and tackle.

It had taken me roughly several minutes to form each shape at the start, by the end it was taking under a minute. Probably around thirty seconds.

This cube of doom took me nearly half an hour to create. I initially tried to tackle multiple directions at the same time like I had initially with the simpler shapes. I would form the entire structure almost simultaneously and then hold it in my mind before releasing it.

The cube wasn’t nearly as easy to do that with. There were twelve edges to work with this time rather than three or four that I was used to. Eventually I stopped trying to form each side at once and focused on building it from the ground up. I started with the bottom for edges, the electricity in my palm snaking along to create a square shape.

When it formed the bottom face I started crafting one of the side faces, snaking another line along individually. Stretching it and curving it to make for edges to create another square face. I straightened it out once I had it there in a vague approximation of a square. I made the corners sharper, as close to right angles as I could.

It was rough for my mind to keep the focus on just the two sides initially, but I kept going. I managed a third side before my concentration crumbled and the shape fell apart.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I growled and pulled one of the minds I had from their task to help me with creating it. I was initially able to create up to the third side in half the time it would’ve normally taken me. Then I had the mind hold those sides by itself and focused on crafting a fourth one.

When I got it done I held it myself. I was over halfway done now, I could do this. The fifth side was a struggle just like the second one had been, but it wasn’t impossible to do.

I was sweating by the time I got to the sixth side. The top. I slowly pushed out a single line and allowed it to curve along the top. Almost like a circle. Once it was in place I stretched it and had it fit to the top edges of the either square faces. Having somewhere to slot it helped with the strain of trying to make it. Electricity wanted to join together and conglomerate. In this case it was beneficial because it wanted to connect with itself.

The way it wasn’t beneficial was that it wanted to collapse into an unformed shape and explode everywhere. I was holding it against that nature.

Slowly, but surely I created the final face. I smoothed out the edges on top and fixed the corner angles to be more appropriate. And after thirty minutes of trying to make it I held a perfect cube. Or as close as I could make it. I snagged another mind to help me hold it so I could rotate it to get a good view of it.

It was pretty cool to look at, that’s for sure.

‘Ping’ You’ve acquired a new skill - [Electric Manipulation]

Ahhh. There we go. I allowed my concentration on the cube to fall away allowing the energy to dissipate. It had taken me nearly an hour to finally get it, but now I had it. It was just one more skill to work on, but I had a feeling it would be worth it in the end. Just like [Wood Manipulation] at the very least.

I was completely worn out at this point though, I crawled into the makeshift bed I had here and allowed sleep to finally take me.

I dreamed of the limitless possibilities that awaited me in the future of leveling my skills.

***

I woke feeling well-rested. I wasn’t sure how long I had actually slept for, but I could see people occupying the main commons area at this point. So at the very least I slept for more than a few hours. I got up and walked out of my room. I was in a good mood today so I wanted to go talk with the few people I felt I could call friends at this point in time.

I found Kayla and Max first, only by a small margin. Kayla seemed to have a sixth sense for when I left my room and ambushed me as I came out of the short tunnel leading to my room.

“Alex!” She said from right beside me, I believe it was an attempt to scare me. But I wasn’t surprised given that I had seen her before I had even left my room.

I just smiled at her, “Hi, Kayla,” I replied calmly.

She frowned and pouted a little, “How did you not flinch? I waited there for so long to get you with that.”

Max laughed from where he had been standing, “I told you it wouldn’t work. He fights in those cage matches. I’ve heard some of the soldiers mention his fights. He has an uncanny sixth sense for things happening out of sight. They’re assuming it has to do with all the flowers he makes. Which tracks with all the flowers he’s made around the cavern here.”

I wasn’t honestly all that surprised people had figured it out. I was more surprised that the soldiers were talking about me.

“I guess I must have a bigger reputation than I thought if they’re talking about me outside of the matches.”

Max nodded, “Yeah, I mean. You’re second tier, or so they say. It’s extremely impressive that you managed to even win once, let alone the four times you’ve won so far.”

Huh.

“That’s fair I guess. Although I have a bit of an advantage. Honestly, anyone in my position would win like I have. The sword I have helps a lot as well, not many defenses can stand up against it.”

Kayla practically bounced with excitement, “What’s the secret? Why are you winning so much? Tellmetellmetellmetellmetellmetellme!”

Her excitement was infectious, causing me to laugh as she hounded me for answers.

“I can’t tell you that unfortunately, for both of our sakes.”

She tried to give me puppy dog eyes, but I just raised an eyebrow and gave her a look.

“Bah, you’re no fun,” She pouted, turning away from me with her arms crossed.

I just laughed again, “Maybe one day, I can tell you. But right now I’m not strong enough to keep people safe if I tell them my secrets.”

Max frowned slightly, probably making the connection. His next words confirmed that.

“Wait, wouldn’t that mean Lurks knows already?”

I didn’t answer, but he saw the pained look on my face. That combined with my silence was more than enough of an answer.

“Ah… sorry,” He said somewhat sheepishly, at least having the decency to be slightly embarrassed for bringing it up. “Forget I said anything.”

I shook my head, “It’s fine. Not your fault. It sucks, but that’s the situation with being a slave. Not much we can really do about it. If anything it’s my fault for getting caught in the first place. I more than likely could have run away from the guards in Verdanst if I had bothered. I doubt they would have been able to keep up with me if I had decided to run. But I didn’t. Here I am now.”

Max nodded slowly, either not convinced of what I had said or unsure of the situation in general.

Either way it didn’t particularly matter I guess.

“So how long have you guys been back? I only just woke up,” I asked in an attempt to change subjects.

“A while, a few hours maybe?” Max answered.

“Oh man, you should’ve been there Alex!” Kayla interjected.

“Come on, let’s go sit down, I have a story for you.”

She grabbed me by the arm and led me over to a nearby empty table, Max just shooting me an amused but slightly apologetic look.

“Okay, so…” She then launched into this long winded story about how her shift started.

It started off normal like all the other shifts, this time she was working with the picks, trying to knock away some of the wall to make room for the carts. Well it had started off normally, nothing really to talk about.

One of the soldiers had come by and started harassing one of the other girls she was working with. Initially they ignored him, since they weren’t exactly supposed to talk while they were working. But this guy took offense to that apparently.

Kayla scoffed at that point of her story, “He was being completely unreasonable about it. Wouldn’t leave us alone. Well, eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and the girl was just letting him touch her all over so I said ‘if you don’t leave you’re gonna regret it!’”

“That sounds like a way to get yourself in trouble with the soldiers,” I replied. Max nodded in agreement.

“That’s exactly what I said to her.”

Kayla just smirked, “so you’d think, right? Well, he turned to me and basically went ‘Oh yeah? What are you gonna do about it?’ So I walked over to him and slammed my pick into the wall next to him and then jumped back. At first nothing happened and the soldier started laughing, but then-!”

Kayla stopped dramatically making sure she had both of our attention. Max had already heard the story or been there personally, but he paid attention as well. Or at least pretended to be paying attention.

“A big rock fell down from above and landed on his shoulder and broke it!” She exclaimed, pantomiming a big rock falling down from the heavens, complete with a little explosion sound as it hit, assumedly the shoulder of the soldier.

“Well of course he started screaming, cause I’m sure that hurts. Well, Lurks showed up shortly afterwards and didn’t even ask what happened. I guess she read our minds to see what went down. She stood there extremely still for a long time and for a while I thought I was going to get in trouble, but then she just grabbed the soldier and dragged him off. I’m not sure what happened to him after that.”

Huh. I guess it made sense though, soldiers distracting the slaves from working couldn’t be a good thing. Maybe if it had happened off hours she wouldn’t have cared.

I voiced as much to her as well.

Max nodded thoughtfully, “Yeah I could see that. Given…” He gestured to me, “I could see her allowing other soldiers and stuff to potentially take trophies. So long as she gets first pick anyways.”

Kayla shivered, “Disgusting, honestly. I don’t see how they can view people as lesser just because of an arbitrary idea such as slavery.”

I shrugged, “It’s because of that arbitrary classification that they feel powerful in the first place. They would view other people as lesser regardless, this just helps them implement their narcissism in a way that’s more tangible to the people around them. It helps justify their desires to themselves in a way.”

Kayla looked thoughtful for a moment before shrugging, “I’m not sure I really get it. I think it’s wrong regardless.”

Max sighed, “I’ve tried to explain the concepts to her a lot before. She’s not stupid, she just isn’t interested in the idea. It’s wrong so it’s wrong, kind of mentality,” He said in a way of explanation.

I shrugged, “Doesn’t matter to me, I agree with her on the fact that it’s wrong. I don’t like slavery, and if I had the ability I would cut it out of this world. Unfortunately, I’m a weak nobody right now. Maybe one day though.”

Max just laughed, “Yeah, well if you make it there one day don’t forget about your friends back here.”

“Of course,” I said, “I’d never leave you all here if I could get you out. And that’s a promise.”