Alex was pulled from his sleep by the sound of Sam’s rustling blankets. His eyes snapped open, and he looked around until he realized it was just the teen making the sheets on his cot look neat. Alex had noticed him doing it a very precise way each morning.
I wonder if the merchant made him do it like that every morning. Or maybe his parents?
Alex rubbed his eyes and stretched as he sat up. He wanted to get Sam’s attention, and the boy looked over just at the sound of him moving. Valtherion must have heard them as well, since he came floating up from the small nest of blankets he’d dragged under Alex’s bed.
Extending a thread of mana toward Sam, Alex waited to see if he accepted. After the last week, he’d started to realize that Sam was much more energetic and willing to talk in the mornings.
Weird kid.
Sam smiled back at him. Through his left eye, Alex could see a small blue tendril of mana wobble away from his body. It was much harder for Sam to create the tendrils of mana than it had been for Alex. When he’d been explaining the process of how to do it, he had told Sam about his old [Mana Shaping] skill and how much it helped him.
Sam then did something Alex didn’t even know was possible: He shared a System screen with Alex, letting him see the description for an ability.
[Mana Sensitivity] - An innate ability to sense and slightly manipulate mana in the environment, aiding in spellcasting efficiency.
After Alex had gotten over the idea that screens could be visible to others, he’d been surprised to see that Sam had a sort of sensory skill. While it wasn’t as easy to sense as Alex’s ability to visually see mana, Sam was able to sense where it was outside of his body, which gave him a minor boost to manipulating it. Without the skill, Alex wasn’t sure if he would have been able to learn to make the tendril at all.
Twenty-one days left until the assault. How are you doing, Sam?
“Good, Mr. Moore. I want to go home.”
Hey, knock that off. I told you to call me Alex. Mr. Moore is my dad, and I’m not even that old.
Alex sent some mental feelings of encouragement to Sam, along with the thought of ruffling his hair.
Sam simply nodded, and their quiet conversation was interrupted by Val, who used his own mana to join the link.
“Home!”
Both Alex and Sam laughed again, breaking the connection.
Alex got up and walked to the kitchen to make some food for them both.
Sam is way too polite. I wonder what his parents are like; he seems like a good kid.
As he moved around the kitchen area, he practiced the mana shaping exercises that Eura had taught him, quickly making different complex shapes in the air in alternating patterns with his [Mana Threads]. He could already tell a huge improvement over where he’d been a week ago.
Sam quietly joined him a short time later and began to practice his own meditation at the table.
They continued with their normal routine. His morning training with Master Li exhausted him and pushed him to his physical limits. Master Li told Alex that it was time to begin the next phase of his training, which was learning to read opponents’ movements. The Master invited Sam to come onto the mats to observe.
At first, the boy was nervous, but when Master Li told him that he was just to observe and not join in on the training, he was more willing. It wasn’t long before Alex realized why this training could be beneficial for Sam as well. Master Li went through a wide range of movements and began to explain to Alex what to watch for. A large part of the explanation was to show where feints would come from and how to recognize subtle shifts in stances.
A short time later, Alex was lying on his back on the mats, panting heavily. Even while gasping for air, he used his [Mana Thread] to practice his drills in the downtime.
“You’re ready for the next step, little human.”
“Huh?” Alex asked, sitting up. He wiped the sweat from his eye and turned to Eura.
“Your speed and control over your mana have improved enough to more efficiently utilize your Willpower. You should keep working to adapt, but for now, this is adequate.” Eura turned to the Martial Master, who had been waiting for Alex to finish catching his breath. “Master Li, are you done with him for the day?”
Master Li bowed and nodded his head. “Yes, we are done for the day. The next step will be to go on to the more advanced form of Willow Branch Sways, which will allow you to evade attacks more easily. While focusing on this isn’t normal, in the Celestial Lotus Sword Style, there is a branch that does. That’s what we’ll be doing with your training moving forward.”
Alex tilted his head, curious to know more. Master Li was the least talkative of his trainers, so it wasn’t normal for him to get such an explanation.
“The goal will be to improve on the style you were using naturally with your magic. We’ve focused on grappling and throws up until this point, but it was just so you understood how they worked. As we move into the next stage, the point will be to move to trips and sweeps, using your new knowledge of weight distribution and reading opponents. Together, these things combine into something more, allowing for a very frustrating fighting style.”
“Thank you, Master Li.” Alex said, while standing to give a slight bow. “Why don’t more people use this branch of the style?”
Might as well capitalize on his talkative mood, right?
“Hmm… mainly because it requires a much higher mental agility. You need to be aware of your surroundings and constantly analyze your opponent’s movements for it to work. We don’t teach it to young disciples because they lack battle experience and the mental processing speed to fully use the style. The Sect Head assures me that you will be able to use this style better than most, so we put our trust in his judgment.”
Eura winked at Alex when he looked over. Soon, the martial instructor left, leaving Sam and Alex facing Eura with Val zipping around between the garden plants.
“Let me clarify something for you both. Stats of the System have layers to them. There is how they affect your body, and then there is how they affect your abilities. Both physical and magical stats tend to affect your abilities in obvious ways. Those skills that are physical or that require some amount of physical action are enhanced by physical stats. At the same time, those dealing with magic and spells are enhanced by the magical stats. So, don’t put too much thought into this layer.
“Where things get difficult is how they affect the body and mind. Physical stats, of course, directly alter your physical body. Whether that be muscle size, speed, longevity of life, or more. Most races tend to acclimate to these quickly, and their body adjusts quickly.
“Magical Stats, though, affect the mind. And to a lesser degree, parts of the soul. Because a human’s mind governs their body, which can confuse people who see minor improvements in areas where they might not have expected improvement. The magical stats can have some lesser effects that others might not account for.
He paused, but seeing that neither had questions, continued. “Willpower is one of the more difficult stats to explain to the newly Awakened. For your abilities, it will increase their activation speed. It will also increase your control over Qi, or mana, as you call it. This increased control can aid you in completing more complex spells or techniques. A smaller byproduct of this increased control is often efficiency when Qi, as there is less wasted with the greater control. How Willpower affects the mind is unique. It is the mental equivalent of the physical stat: Agility. Similar to how Agility increases speed and physical control over muscles, Willpower does the same for the mind and magic. Your thoughts will come faster and your brain will be able to analyze a situation and make a decision quicker as the stat increases.”
Hearing the last part allowed the explanation from Master Li to fall into place.
“I see, so this fighting style capitalizes on my high Willpower stat. What did Master Li call it? Mental agility?”
Eura nodded, “Yes, precisely. Since you told me your Trait after the assessment, I’m well aware of how high your stat will become over time. It’s likely that you will be able to utilize this fighting style better than anyone in our sect’s history.”
The thought excited Alex.
“But,” Eura said, while holding up a finger, “you need to continue practicing. While our physical body might adapt to increased stats rapidly, the mind is very different. If you’re not training and practicing, it will take much longer to adapt. It could be the difference between reaching your capabilities within months with practice, or decades without it. You saw how even when you released me from my restrictive bindings, I was reduced in strength. It took me several days to return to my original power, and I have had many years to adapt to my own levels of power before being bound.”
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Eura steered the lesson to his next steps. The sect head instructed Alex to begin applying some of the theories that they’d been working on in the last week on how to make the ritual circles smaller. Now that Alex’s speed and control over the threads had increased, the next step was to make the rituals at least half of their current size.
This meant that Alex would need to effectively restructure all the rituals he knew to allow the mana to flow properly in their new dimensions. While this had seemed like a daunting task to Alex at first, he soon fell into the project. Up until that day, it had all been theory. Now he would begin to do the actual magic.
Also, Eura wanted to coach Alex through different methods of using [Mirage]. He pointed out that Alex had barely used the skill in his fight in the market or in his assessment spars. He started out the lesson that afternoon by explaining some of the various ways that the illusion skill could be used and how the Shadow Sect’s warriors had become masters of illusions.
From years of clashing with the enemy sect, Eura had seen many creative applications of the skill. He passed these concepts on to Alex and instructed the younger man to begin thinking through his own variations on the skills used.
Master Shen must have gotten the same memo as Master Li because when he came to Eura’s office for their evening lesson, he immediately began working on the next training phase. He pushed Alex hard, and in the next lesson, [Empowered Step] broke through the bottleneck.
Once again, Alex was given the option to choose between advancing the skill or evolving the skill. He, of course, chose to evolve. After spending long hours with Master Li and Eura, Alex felt confident that the new skill would be much better for him.
The System didn’t disappoint.
Analyzing skill usage…
New Skill Learned: [Feather Step] (Novice - Level 3)
[Feather Step] - Move as light as a feather toward your destination.
Alex had been elated about gaining the new skill. He used it in that very same lesson with Master Shen, who was astonished at the sudden leap in improvement. Since he knew that most people in this Rift didn’t understand the System, and thought instead of things in terms of Qi and techniques, to the master, it appeared that one moment that Alex was struggling to use the movement variation, and then the very next, he was using it flawlessly.
Master Shen had been fascinated by Alex’s sudden understanding, saying that he must have reached a bit of enlightenment. Alex could swear that the old man was looking at him with some reverence for the rest of the training session.
The lesson for that day changed; instead of working on learning to slip and dodge different incoming sword attacks, Master Shen had Alex practice the Eight Petal Step combined with the new [Feather Step] ability repeatedly. While this was boring for Alex, he was thankful that he was made to do it. The use of the ability through a movement he already knew so well helped him to get a much better understanding of the skills, capabilities, and limitations.
[Feather Step] wasn’t necessarily a direct upgrade to [Empowered Step]. It was more of a lateral upgrade. The skill was more refined in many ways to his old movement skill and it had one big benefit that he’d been striving to work into his variation. Point-to-point travel. By combining his new levels of mana control with his increased willpower, the knowledge he had from studying the [Shadow Step] ability from the manual, and his own experience with [Empowered Step], he was able to come up with something perfect.
Alex and his teachers had noted that even in a fight where he was using rituals, most of his mana was expended through the movement skill. [Empowered Step] had several benefits, but by far, its largest downside for someone like Alex was that it was wasteful in mana consumption. Because of how he had created the skill, he was able to push as much mana into it as he wanted, which often led to far too much mana being used just to get from point A to point B. In stressful situations, he had a tendency to do this even more. While Alex wasn’t feeling his mana issues as much as he once did, he knew that was mostly just because of his titles. He wanted to continue to make sure that he was being conservative with his mana and [Feather Step] helped accomplish that goal.
Now, to use his movement ability, he simply needed to focus on a destination and activate the skill. His entire body and clothes would become lighter, and he could push off in that direction. His traveling speed depended on how hard he pushed off of the ground, which seemed to delight Master Shen. The older man had immediately gone into a rant about how Alex could begin to learn how to change his travel direction and speed at a moment’s notice to throw off his opponent.
Needless to say, this interrupted Master Shen’s planned training outline for the next several days. The martial master put Alex through the wringer, testing every possible angle of the skill. While it was grueling work, Alex had to admit that the man was thorough. It made Alex feel guilty about not testing his other skills and abilities to understand their limitations and advantages.
Okay, in my defense, when the hell have I had time for that kind of thing? I’ve been running for my life or getting my ass kicked almost every day since I stepped into this Rift.
“Many arms!”
An accompanying mental image of a Mana Spinner came through their bond.
Alright… maybe I could have done some testing while we were in the tunnels. But I didn’t know what was going on. Hey, who’s side are you on any way?
“Mana!” came Val’s reply in a cheerful tone.
Alex rolled his eyes and began to pack up from his lessons with Master Shen.
After several days of training had passed, Master Shen allowed Alex to begin practicing with a sword again. This time, they worked the sword forms into the full Eight Petal Steps, and the master would call out at random times for Alex to use his movement ability during the next step. This kind of training was fun to Alex. It felt satisfying to achieve a level of physical proficiency while also challenging his mind.
He slid the jian short sword into the sheath on his back and adjusted it for the hundredth time. All three of his teachers had agreed that it would be good for Alex to practice using the sword from the traditional carrying position. Even though spatial bags could make it work, sometimes they were even slower than having the weapon readily available, or sometimes they were taken or lost.
Remembering how his captors had taken his spatial bag immediately, he had to agree. He’d be sorely upset if he somehow lost the spatial bag or it was stolen, but he could understand the practical value of getting accustomed to the weight and movement of the sheath on his back. Both the sheath and strap were unadorned and made of simple leather; however, with Alex’s life of modern technology and high-end engineering, he couldn’t help but think of how much nicer it might be to wear something specially made to fit his shoulders and back.
Guess it can’t hurt to be prepared though…
He made a mental note to retrieve the rest of his confiscated weapons from Eura and begin carrying spares in his spatial pouch.
Shaking off the thought, he focused on the servant as he heard a report being given to Eura across the room.
The Council is at it again? We’ve got 18 days left until the assault. Why are they playing such stupid games right now?
Since Eura had denied the Council’s demand of private tutoring for their own disciples, they had become bold and some spoke openly about their thoughts on Eura’s choices. The two decisions that came up most often were that Alex was receiving special treatment as an outsider and that the assault mission was being led by an outsider while risking sect warrior lives.
While the first one was true, the second one was blatantly false. Alex was not leading the attack against the Firstborn. While Eura continued his investigations for a spy, he’d made the decision to keep the plan vague until the two-week mark. Only the general plan had been formed, and personnel weren’t even going to be picked until the plan was decided upon. To Alex, it seemed like the Council was just attempting to stir the pot, though he couldn’t tell what their goal was.
Even if they get more people on their side and create unrest, Eura could lose his patience eventually and just slap them around. The power dynamic here is so out of proportion with how low the Council is. They’re putting a lot of faith in Eura’s moral compass.
Alex was impressed with the sect head’s patience and willingness to play the political game, and Alex was slightly worried at the realization that he might not react with as much grace. He wondered how he would act when he returned to Earth and was in a similar position of power.
Sam walked over to join Alex as he adjusted the strap on his shoulder. He ruffled the teen’s hair, who gave him a mocking glare. The look made Alex smile, and he was happy that he could move more freely around Sam. The boy seemed to trust him enough to not reflexively flinch around him anymore. That made Alex happy, and he felt himself growing more and more fond of the blonde-haired young man.
Man, we’ve got to keep you away from Sarah. She’d go full mom mode, I’m sure of it.
With almost half of their training timeline finished, Alex found himself unable to keep his thoughts from home and friends. Something about this made his psyche relax in some ways and tense up in others. He found himself falling asleep easier, but on the other hand, he was having more and more nightmares about fights. His least favorite was when his mind would replay events in the fight with Hong Xiu, and he could see the sword coming toward his face impossibly slowly, but no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to move out of the sword’s way.
Another dream that he kept having was that he would come home and that his parents had all but forgotten about Alex and had completely put their attention on Jake. In that same dream, Jake had become a world-renowned Awakened and was, for some reason, accepted by his parents. When he woke up, the inconsistencies in the dream were obvious. The biggest one was that to everyone outside of this Rift, not even a full week had passed. It was more likely that Alex’s parents thought he was ignoring them than they thought he had passed away. Also, he knew that his parents refused to entertain any talks about the Awakened, particularly his dad.
This time dilation stuff is trippy. Can we create something that will keep track of both timelines side by side? Or if some sort of new standardized time will be created? How would that even work? A fancy magical pocket watch?
Turning his attention back to the present and away from his dreams, Alex remembered that he needed to tell Eura about his new skill. He waited for the attendant to finish their report on the Council before crossing the room and greeting the sect head. With no one in the room other than the normal trio, Eura smiled at them warmly and motioned for them to sit.
“How’s training, Alex? I congratulate you on your progress, you learn quickly.”
Alex shrugged and felt some heat rise up his neck at the praise. “Stats are a crazy thing. I can’t take too much credit.”
“Bah, plenty of people have high stats in the later levels. Hard work is important, but there is a natural way with most warriors. You have that in you. Don’t cheapen it by pushing your progress off on ‘just stats.’” Eura scoffed and waved his hand as if to blow away a bad smell.
Unsure of what to say, Alex changed the subject to a new skill he gained unexpectedly “I actually wanted to tell you about a new skill I got. It randomly came to me last night while I was working on reducing the size of a trap ritual.”
“Oh? What is it?”
“It’s a passive skill called [Sleep Resistance].”
Eura burst into laughter. At the sudden noise, Val zipped over to do a few circles over Eura. It was clear that he was interested in laughter lately. Seeing the full-body belly laugh, Alex paused and couldn’t help but smile. When he glanced at Sam, he saw one corner of the teen’s lips curled upward.
After Eura recovered, he motioned for Alex to follow him, and they began to make their way outside of the city. Sam and Val followed closely behind and Eura didn’t give them much indication of where they were going. When Alex had asked, the celestial said, “We’re going to go chat about structured and unstructured magic.”