---James---
James crossed the distance to his training dummy, feeling the way the energy in his body swirled and fluctuated.
As he moved, he tried to activate [haste].
The skill wasn’t there anymore. The mental ‘hook’ he had to activate it was gone.
And yet the energy swirling about his veins in a loop whispered to him. There was feedback from his wishes – the concepts still shifting and embedding themselves in him sang out what he had to do.
…energy wasn’t the most accurate term for the mana and aether rushing through his veins. Potential felt more accurate…and yet what was stored potential energy if not simply energy?
James twisted his mana – reaching into the contained kinetic potential and pulled. He pulled the mana out of his veins and sunk it into his muscles dragging the energy into its purpose. Mana sunk into his muscles like water being poured on desert soil disappearing deep into the flesh and interacting with the stats hidden within.
Parched muscles drunk mana and swelled.
James accelerated.
It was less instant than a [haste] activation…and yet James could tell it was simply inexperience and his body being in such an unstable state that turned an instant activation into a steady ramp-up.
James continued to move faster and faster, distant memories of the description he had received back in the tutorial flickering to the forefront of his mind.
Stats were the base. Skills were the multiplier. Increasing both synergized the result into something greater than either could reach alone.
James surpassed his maximum speed of just a few minutes before and kept going.
James had slowly but steadily built up an incredibly solid base of speed stats concentrated in the muscles he used most often while fighting. If he could previously run at 40-50 km/hr using just his stats, 120-150 km/hr using a 3x boost from haste. Now…now it was ballooning into something like 150-400 km/hr as his multiplier grew stronger and stronger and the limits broke.
The massive neck monster had begun slamming its entire upper body downwards towards the bug as it rushed towards him, but James was already past it.
The neck moved surprisingly quickly for its size as it smashed into one of the few flaming trees behind James. A splintering crash rang out as the magma giraffe completely flattened the foliage and the shattered tree baked the area in heat then caused a rain of smoldering coals to pelt the surroundings.
James turned on a dime feeling a strange disconnect from his body as the mana fueling haste flickered to aether and back to mana. His body flipped involuntarily midair as his unstable state cost him a second of control.
Mana manipulated speed directly. It filled his veins with velocity.
Aether approached speed differently than mana did.
As far as aether was concerned, speed wasn’t a force. Force was mass multiplied by acceleration. To speed up, you applied force to your mass which increased your speed. The force had to be applied from somewhere – aether had to push off something in the air even as it twisted his current momentum attempting to direct it towards the creature in front of him.
Speed returned and James jumped, finding his body rising higher and higher as he rose above the slowly raising neck and flipped midair.
James began to fall, his body now sideways as it passed by the tree trunk-like neck.
He punched as hard as he could, drawing mana down his veins and into his fist in a reverberating burst his stores dropping to a fraction in a moment.
His hand burned slightly from the impact – the monster was hot. More importantly, his unstable flicker twisted the side in control right before the moment of impact.
As far as mana was concerned, punching something while flying through the air made complete sense. As far as aether was concerned, there wasn’t anything to brace off of and it hadn’t prepared to brace off something. Effect-wise, James found himself smacking the beast’s neck then rocketing backwards through the sky as the force of his punch was applied equally to his body.
Ragdolling midair, James righted himself and saw the entire nest from above. Close to three kilometers in diameter, the nest stood out against the endless green planes like an orange splotch on a green canvas.
His brain spent a second trying to link what he was seeing to something…and failed. The surroundings didn’t matter, all that mattered was what was happening to him.
James realized he was falling downward quite quickly, and a faint flicker of panic shook his focus. While his mind blanked, his body attempted to instinctually react causing James to look inwards.
All his skills were mushed together currently. They were in an incredibly fluid – if unstable – state and responded nearly instantly to his desires. It felt like he should take some time to slowly meditate and feel them out, but James obviously didn’t have time. Instead, he ripped into the ideas, dragging mana about his body as concepts screamed their purpose into his body. James grabbed and smashed his desires into the concepts in the seconds he remained airborne, teasing out some of the voices from the others and ignoring the rest.
James twisted the first part of the redirection skill – the idea of grabbing all the kinetic energy from an attack – and then, instead of shoving it onto a sacrifice, fed it into the retaliation skill. The one that sapped kinetic energy to release later.
James landed on his back feeling the majority of the impact transforming directly into potential and joining the energy swirling through his veins kicking them back into bursting. There wasn’t an invisible pool to fill with kinetic potential anymore – there was just his body and what he could shove into it.
This stolen energy wasn’t his in the same way his mana and aether was. It felt wild.
It also leaked. When the retaliatory skill was some nebulous external thing, leaking from that invisible pool was simply the potential draining and disappearing because it wasn’t used.
When that external pool was shifted to his body, leaking meant the energy steadily infused his body. It now sunk into his veins and fueled the haste-like mana burn in his muscles. Something in his foundation clicked. Something in his mutation was unblocked slightly – his body drinking the draining energy making sure not a single drop was wasted.
James ran back towards the field boss, the sparsely set glowing trees blurring past like neon lights in a city.
Punching directly hadn’t worked well for him – the monster was a living furnace.
Where were the rocks? All James could see were smoldering trees?
James kept his eyes pealed for something to put between his fists and the creature’s hot body.
A massive splinter of the tree was embedded in a tree in front of him.
Yanking the splinter out as he passed, James hefted the makeshift spear and shot towards the hulking figure in front of him.
Crossing a hundred meters in a single second, James jumped and then ripped as much of his momentum out of his charge as he could while dumping it into his spear even as he threw. The splinter of wood shot away from him at the speed of sound.
The shard of wood turned to splinters as it impacted the boss’s neck near the base and drew bright yellow blood with a sharp crack.
James skidded slightly and shot to the side once more.
Nearly all his mana was spent once again but James jumped to meet the swing of the beast’s neck head on.
James felt the air before he felt the impact and yet found himself grinning as the neck approached. The boss’s attack almost looked slow as it rushed towards him through the air.
James felt slightly invincible as he activated his previous impact devouring skill and ripped a massive amount of kinetic energy out of the strike then shoved the potential straight into his pool.
The cocky attitude was burned straight out of James a moment later.
Something had shifted – another unstable aspect or perhaps simply his concepts not having settled properly.
It wasn’t just kinetic energy contained in that strike. And it wasn’t just a pure kinetic force that was ripped out and shoved in James’s veins.
Pure heat was briefly stored as potential in James’s mana circuit, the hot potential burning into his blood even as it began steadily draining out and into his muscles and body.
Haste fueled by fire and broke for a moment – speed was so heavily soaked into that skill that heat didn’t know what to do in its place.
Haste had among other things been subtly increasing his perception speed and the broken skill caused the next few seconds to feel like a blur as James was suddenly high in the air his entire body wracked by pain which he took a moment to ignore and recover from.
James found himself starting to fall for the second time in as many minutes. The wind began whistling past his body even as he grabbed the speed mana in his body and twisted it slowing his decent with slow mana. A sort of reverse haste he cut off from his upper body, so it no longer slowed his perception along with his movement.
Weird interactions shifted and clicked as they solidified – his stability increased in the midst of combat his two sides shifting slightly more in line.
Slow mana was an energy that caused things to slow down. it was a physical energy opposite to speed mana while complementary.
…Aether flickered into place and then out whispering this didn’t make sense.
Slow wasn’t an energy. It was the lack of energy. Reducing speed was removing kinetic energy from something.
James’s spent pool began to fill slightly as his unstable skills latched onto this truth shifting his slow energy into a drain of the kinetic energy as aether beat the inconsistency into line. His slow fall was his body stealing energy from gravity. Turning gravitational potential energy into stored kinetic energy.
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Click.
Mana looked at this arrangement and scoffed. Gravity was just a form of movement magic. Gravity was kinetic mana limited to push only downwards causing it to grow slightly stronger because of that limit.
And so, the two forces raging across James’s body began to find commonalities. Mana refilled based on time and lifeforce. It pulled power from the concept of time without weakening time a constant steady reliable trickle. It pulled power from the strength of the user fluctuating with health and emotions and injuries and a thousand tiny things.
Aether refilled based on gravity and chemical processing. A steady constant drain like a miniature version of the massive gravity wells fueling the aether cities. A fluctuating secondary source based on food and metabolizing fat and nutrition into pure power. This fluctuated based on health as well along with how well fed its user was.
They were the same energy. The same not energy twisted in different ways.
Oil and water mixed slightly.
Click
James’s body went through epiphany after epiphany stabilizing more and more as it fell even as his mind tried desperately to catch the instinctual flickering happening throughout the domain that was his body. Throughout the closed system that was his power – the locked room that had the truth to everything.
James had mana and aether. Only one could be active at a time without interfering with the other. Not because they were different energy sources but because the viewpoint you looked at the common ‘potential’ beneath shifted between the two. One lens went to one core the other went to the other. They were both attached to the circuit, both had equal say on how he used the potential.
He could only use one side at once. They shared a pool however – the cost of sacrificing his defensive stats…hadn’t been needed. It had been done – something deep in the idea of his defensive stats had been shattered so it could host his power but…the cost hadn’t been fulfilled. Something ground to a halt at that realization.
His defense did not need to be stifled to accommodate half of one power. His body defense had already been broken in a subtle way – it could not grow but it no longer needed to be stifled to accommodate his power.
And yet his potential already overlapped his defensive stats.
The cost had been paid but the result was not fulfilled. James couldn’t use both powersets at once.
Whatever shattered part of his defensive stats had been broken in the contract attempted to heal.
The cost had been paid and could not be reverted. It could be fixed in a way however. An equivalent exchange.
The meaning behind his defensive stats shifted and fused more tightly to his body mutation.
In less than a second nothing visible had changed but the fundamental balance had shifted entirely.
Initially the majority of his power was held in his veins as his highest pool of defensive stats. That was where it was hosted. His mana circuit. The next highest source of defensive stats before his break had been his bones followed by the skin on his fists. Fundamentally his veins as a source for his power had resonated deeply with James.
Blood was magic as he had seen with Maddy. Blood caried his magic through his body and deposited it where it might be used.
Bones…bones made a great sink for excess power but that was it. A great storage medium – a great place to dump kilojoules of energy, the solid structure insulating them slightly from the rest of his body.
The base meaning of his defensive stats had been broken. As they attempted to heal, these stats latched onto their original purpose and twisted it slightly. A resonance with his mutation finished. There was a foreign energy invading it. A harmful energy that was too wild for his veins.
His body had mutated to absorb what he ate…that which attacked it. His defensive stats existed to protect him from external harm.
His defensive stats existed to help him process the external harm into strength.
The heat burning James was grabbed and shifted into his bones.
Heat pooled and was compressed into James’s bones, his marrow boiling – the physical elements vaporizing instantly deep inside of his body even as his body continued to process the power.
The last bit of his broken aether skills began to regrow and interact with the complex series of interactions happening inside of James’s body clicking into place for the final time.
Aether told him fire was similar to kinetic energy. Kinetic energy was big things moving about. Fire was small things moving about. Aether told him he should be able to create any effect with his movement ability. Aether told him all energy was the same.
Aether said energy could be transferred between these two forms. Take the vibrating atoms and steal their vibration. Store that vibration as potential.
James cooled slightly as his body processed the power into a form it understood.
Mana pointed out the meaning was being scrubbed. The power couldn’t shift that easily. The concept of heat was still there.
There was now a wild kinetic energy with the concept of heat in his body. The concept of heat was a foreign concept the magic in James’s body should not be able to affect.
The mutation in James ate and processed all the esoteric bits of the energy shoving miniscule processed motes of potential into different bits of his body.
From James’s point of view, he had been hit upwards, his veins burning. Rapidly he slowed himself and his body quickly cooled, his mana circuit feeling strained and overworked while a dozen parts of his body screamed different things to itself.
Everything had happened over the course of a few seconds of slowed fall. Mentally James grew more sure of himself as instability was chased away.
James reoriented. He had nearly fallen back to the boss’s grasp and the creature was directly below him, mouth open wide.
How do I move out of the way? I’m in the air?
It’s my body, right? I should be able to move it how I want.
James wrestled his mana inside his body and pushed it to one side even as he dropped his slow fall.
With a sideways dash, he jumped sideways through the air his unstable body no longer fighting him.
There was no involuntary flip-flopping, just him using the ability he wanted.
Currently magic was easier to shape, so James stayed nearly solely within the realm of imagination and mana as he dodged a bite and pulled his body back through the air manipulating his speed directly.
Gravity tugged downwards incessantly and yet his magic had already learned it was simply a force it held domain over. It simply had to pull the power pulling it down into itself. Gravity was nothing more than fuel.
If James had noticed, he had an audience he would have tried more graceful backflips and darts through the air…but it was all he could do to focus on dragging his body back and forth as he dodged swipe and bite after swipe and bite.
Down below R sat on a comfortable-looking chair eating what looked suspiciously like popcorn.
Evasion wasn’t an attack.
Sooner or later, something would fail, and James’s fuel was rapidly running lower.
He didn’t belong in the sky yet.
Directing his body straight down James briefly embraced and enhanced the pull of gravity with mana then shifted and aimed towards one of the boss’s spider legs.
They looked fragile and the boss had not moved once since his battle had begun.
Smashing down like a comet James punched straight down transferring his own momentum into a strike and slowing to a slight fall right as he landed.
The leg broke surprisingly easily considering how tough the boss had seemed up till now.
It also hadn’t been hot.
Grabbing the leg, James dodged the falling neck and began to run backwards attempting to think.
That swing…that swing seemed slightly faster than anything before.
Tossing his prize to the side James reversed directions and headed back directly towards the monster.
Strafing around the side of the creature James dodged a tree trunk sized neck thudding into the ground beside him then darted forward and punched once again. Channeling a bit of juice into his fist to help the punch along, James smashed off a second leg the insect-like appendage flipping up and into the air as it was knocked off.
A bellow rent the air as the creature grew slightly faster and attacked once again. Swiping around in a protective sweep that James had to jump back to avoid.
His brain was finally starting to think in terms of strategy. The foundations were pretty uniform across both sides and species. As a tough monster that attacked physically…this boss definitely had a body foundation.
For the most part, the difference between large amounts of defense and either a specialized body or generalized body were easy to spot. A generalized body with lots of defense would be squishier. Easy to land attacks, easy to draw blood or take off a limb. They would be less affected by those minor wounds, however. They would heal easier. Essentially, they had a massive health pool and low amour.
A specialized body with lots of defense on the other hand would be able to shrug off more attacks. Instead of healing from blows they would simply ignore them. A specialized tank would be a wall you couldn’t break.
In exchange they had a single point you could focus on. A core or cores.
A weakness concentrated into a single point instead of spread throughout the entire body.
Another dart and smash of a leg caused the creature to stumble and swing even faster.
As far as magic was concerned limits and scenarios created strength. This boss had its unhidden cores attached to its body. In exchange, it seemed to gain speed and presumably strength the closer it came to dying.
James had found the creature’s initial movements laughably easy to dodge, but as he worked his way through the legs he began to sweat. Even as he increased the amount of mana he was shoving into ‘haste’ the margin of error for each dodge was becoming slimmer and slimmer.
His AI took that time to finish booting up online, its entire functionality briefly exposed to the situation. Its fuel seemed strained – the device itself had been made into a slot locking it into a permanent skill as far as aether was concerned. Mana seemed to want to rejoin the rest of his body and his truth of flipping between mana and aether didn’t like the disconnect between the ai being an aether source and mana wanting a single combined pool.
A flex of will fixed things. The ai was cut off from his general pool the effects of powering it with mana instead of aether mitigated.
As it finished coming online, several blue boxes appeared about the edges of James’s vision like a Hud.
Functionally his AI was a powerful newborn. It hadn’t grown with him yet and knew not to interrupt or offer advice. It did seem to react to his wishes somewhat as some marvel of technology had it read James’s surface thoughts and minimize most of the boxes.
Deciding to help in the only way it knew how his AI calculated his pool, his regeneration, his current draw and then helpfully displayed them all along with a little timer telling him how long it would take till he reached zero.
12.056s
Thanks…real helpful.
James pushed even more mana into haste watching the timer rapidly begin dropping faster before his AI took into account the new draw and flipped to a 4s timer.
With a final burst of speed, James shot forward smashing the final leg and carrying past the final defensive swipe from the monster.
A single guttural wail rang out and then the creature collapsed.
Its flailing neck lost all power continuing its momentum and dragging its body with it causing the fat torso to be pulled to its side leaking yellow blood from every smashed core.
James stood breathing heavily watching his pool tick from 1% to 2% on the screen even as a blue box appeared.
🦕 Achievement get: Take down the long-necked ember king. (unique)
Description: Solo beat a field boss at your advancement level.
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Stat: +9 free body power.
Stat: +9 free body speed.
Main reward: Nonstandard break stabilized. Partial concepts of information and translation infused into embedded artifact
Behind him a faint clapping broke the silence. James flinched and glanced over at R waving him down from the sidelines.
James looked about and then slowly walked over to his audience, an awkward feeling pushing down the pride he had felt for winning.
“Good on you, knew you could do it” R waved smiling happily.
James stopped before the creature and looked down. R was lounging in a reclining chair. Upon his face were a pair of those old 3D cinema glasses, the blue and red sunglasses looking slightly comical upon his waxy indistinct form.
“Is…is that it?” James asked looking about.
R nodded for a moment standing up and causing his items to melt away.
“Yeah, that’s it. Congrats on passing the trial! Well done and all that. I’ll give you a moment to collect yourself and then I can toss you back in the previous zone if you like. Your job as absolute only really starts when everyone gets here, and I wouldn’t want you to lose out on the clear rewards.”
James nodded slightly and then looked back at the smoldering body of his kill.
“Sure, I’ll toss you back with your kill if you like. It would only rot here anyways” R nodded seemingly reading James’s mind.
“Just give me a shout when you are ready. I really don’t mind.” R continued stepping back as if giving him some space.
James looked about trying to figure out if there was anything else he needed here.
OH! His spice bag. For some reason his backpack was sitting on the ground beside where R had been sitting.
Grabbing his supplies and shrugging them onto his back James looked over at R and nodded.
“Ready”
And within a blink, the world changed.
He seemed to have been kicked back to the wilderness. James found himself in the prehistoric forest once again standing beside the smoldering carcass of the monster he had killed.
Ahead of him a river rushed past and faintly the sound of a waterfall rang out.
R was gone.
James took a moment to check out the surroundings and then carefully checked over the body of the monster beside him.
He was worried it might start a fire.
Helpfully his AI pointed out R seemed to have dumped it on a rocky area beside the water specifically so it would not light the forest on fire.
Staking out the surroundings James returned and stared at his catch once again.
Now for the real question.
How should he go about eating this?