I let loose all my frustration and put aside any concerns I have for the moment as I march through the enemy ahead of our main body of troops. I did wait for everyone to get a little rest, but now is my time to bash the enemy, the group of people that made themselves our enemy when they came to our land and tried to steal and kill and place us neatly underneath their boot heels.
Dozens of shields surround me, from bulwarks that could cover a small tank or more realistically a car, to the skin conforming layer of shielding around just my body and my best root armor with the old titan skin strands.
The enemy gained a couple of levels compared to the last time I did this, which means stats and skill levels, but I became two people inhabiting one body and so while he focus on defense, I can become a berserker.
Each time I think that someone will take my head off or that a critical shield will collapse as the enemy throws the kitchen sink at me, my other half comes through with a margin to spare. Even though he is also myself with all my memories and even some of my capabilities of direct manipulation, it’s strange to trust someone ‘else’ with my life so many times in a row.
Those thoughts are only on the back of my mind, however, as I bash heads and steal weapons left and right throwing them back for our side to recover. I give myself to the combat. Dozens of Avatar wearing seeds are even more aggressive than I’m, seemingly not caring for their lives. But that is an illusion given the risk for them is very low with the option to send their consciousness back to the inner world at any instant.
They hadn’t yet seen much combat so far, mostly to give the others a chance to learn while the numbers and power level was a little more manageable, but that equation was rapidly changing. The enemy was stronger, and that would skyrocket in the coming months. We could no longer play by the same rules. The avatars who had been ready to provide support the whole time at the back now step up. The number of casualties was mounting and even more extreme changes would come down.
After all, even if my wooden avatars are capped in their strength level, they are also significantly stronger than most people with stats of over 50 points across the board, though I can see paths to increase them a little more as new developments in biological research manifested.
Without trepidation, I ride the edge of the two armies. The flow is different from the first time when the other Elf Arch Druid was in charge, but it still pushes me to my limits even as my allies step in and out of the boundaries of the village.
The mass of troops surrounds and encroaches into their city.
Each of my moves is a dance, even as dozens of opponents ‘break through’ my outer defenses layers past the avatars and reach close combat range. Even then, it is clear to a blind man that I’m in control and my spatial awareness is all but perfect. Spinning my deep steel staff around, even with its halved damage, lets me perfectly meld magic and physical exertion.
Simple constructs of Qi and increase the power of my attacks denting metal plates like tin foil, even if not a single one of them wears anything worse than +3 or +4 armor.
The enemy tries and if I didn’t have support just a dozen meters to my back or my avatars, I might be in trouble, but they don’t manage to pin me down and that is the final nail in their coffin. I end up not actually killing many, even as I swing wildly hitting with all my might over and over. But each one I eliminate, most of which are by dragging past our defense lines, is one less combatant on their side and this other side lets me taste and learn from a wholly different form of combat.
Eventually, they will have to hide in the center unless they are willing to be ever so slowly ground down to the last elf.
It wouldn’t be a nice experience for me, and it would take days of non stop fighting. Maybe even longer but for all of their willingness to sacrifice their lives, they aren’t suicidal and if they have no chance and they accomplished whatever objective their commander set out, they will retreat.
Though to fit even the 15 thousand troops left in that single cathedral like building, they will have to squeeze a little more. Fifteen times the number of people in a building that is only about 8 times larger.
And as this entered my mind, I realise that the village turned city’s size is ‘off’. And its not by a marginal amount. The same thing happened to it as with the cathedral.
We saw 10 times more troops arriving, but the city only grew 8 times in area.
Could this be the real benefit of our attacks, or better yet one of them? It could be a coincidence or something along the normal progression route, but I don’t think so, not this early on.
A pair of particularly skilled swordsmen enter my domain and I pay full attention to their actions.
Not time to ponder on these questions. Even if moving my body stimulates my brain. No, now is the time to bash in some skulls. Having to pay little to no attention to my defenses, only pumping out Qi, Life and Vigor through my veins, I pulse with strength that would have shattered concrete and the enemy can do absolutely nothing to stop me, except maybe use their razor-sharp weapons as area denial implements. But they can’t get through my shields, nor pin me down. So it becomes a slog, slowly making my way forward as I dance around, leaving trails of injured and dead behind me.
I grab their weapons pushing them out of position, before using my own weapon with both hands or swinging my fists. And then… I go back and repeat it all over again. Usually in a different order changing the specifics to match the circumstances. Meanwhile internally and externally using my resources to accelerate my body, to turn on a dime while Qi glues my feet to the ground and fireballs push the enemy further and further on their back foot.
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Any fear and hesitation over my actions are driven far away even as the natural Aether field around me builds with such intensity that I‘m left dumbfounded. What would have taken me, days, months or even years to kindle now comes naturally to me in minutes and I can almost sense on the edge of my perception the weight that everyone’s gazes both from my enemies and my allies have. How their intent, their beliefs shape the world. That had always been the case, but I crossed a threshold beyond which, the pressure of light became the tangible pressure of air. It wasn’t yet as heavy as water, but even AIR was an enormous leap compared to a vacuum.
Now, I can BREATHE Aether.
They are forming it even though they can’t directly wield Aether.
This is as close to proving some of my conjectures as I could hope for. These natural formations were based on belief and the subconscious manipulation of wide and faint fields of Aether. But seeing it firsthand is different from reading I an errant paragraph.
Now it is real.
The unconscious fears that had been holding me back of always having proper defenses and both the mechanics and psychology of simply bulldozing everything that is before me come closer into focus and a smile threatens to break out underneath my root armor.
I can feel very faintly how that field is pushing me forward, how it guides my actions in very subtle ways, and my gut doesn’t revolt so I trust it. It is a fraction of a fraction of a percent, but it is an edge.
I will hone myself in a thousand such ways until I can cut Mithril with my gaze.
With lithe control of my body I dig further down and become even more aggressive trusting myself that if I screw up and overextend myself, the people just a dozen meters behind me and the seeds fighting all around along with the few hidden cards up my sleeve will be enough to pull me from the fires.
While moving I realize that not only the Aether formation around me is growing, each of the armies gets one of their own. Weaker because of how spread out it is, but that hundredth of a percent edge tilts things further in our favor by a minute amount.
The Elves seem to slump in defeat as our side pushes with renewed vigor, and that seems to have little to do with the Aether in the air, though it doesn’t hurt, but from the impossible task before them.
A hint of fear strikes my heart and I wonder if perhaps this Aether isn’t manipulating me again. Warping me into something that I would regret, but a cursory inspection doesn’t reveal anything and so I just go back to the edge of what my body can support.
Pushing the ground leaves indents in the hard packed soil even through branches growing under my feet trying to spread out the impact of my steps.
The limit of my constitution shows itself as the force I exert is greater than my muscles can naturally produce without Qi and I jump around sometimes faster than most sprinters at a full run with the rare ankle flick.
Runes come to me as impact wards on the tip of my staff. I grow and I try to deliver myself to the madness of combat, not because it was the only thing that I want to do, but because letting my mind wander through would either force me to be more conservative or get me killed.
I find that center.
The place where only action exists. The place of implementation without thought or perhaps implementation with the deepest form of thought. The thought that you don’t even know is there. The thought that you make reality without any distractions.
Even as Aether builds and draws from my stores, I let flakes of soul scruff mix in with pure Aether and drink it in faster than any Natural Aether field, but this is only a blip in the map.
New formations and ideas for the impact wards on my hands of my staff push with greater strength, save Qi with each blow or concentrate force on a smaller area.
I become motion incarnate. Not exactly a juggernaut that I thought of when diving in battle, but the one that moves and acts.
The one that protects.
The one that ends threats.
The world is back to a simpler time, where if I wanted to simply lay down and sleep in the middle of the day I could lay beside my best friend, recharge and then go back to work when I had as much rest as I needed.
I simply do what is right for this moment.
But as much as I love Pando, there had always been something missing. My blindness, the blindness of youth, the blindness of my very sense of self, completely wrapped into someone else and the lack of development beyond that one narrow avenue without considering the other purporting pillars that would have taken me higher.
The one being that I grabbed with all my might in place of normal human connection. The one I put on a pedestal.
A different smile shines on my face, even as I feel Pando’s actions, he is nature, he is nurture, but I’m not him or even one of his seeds.
I need to keep developing. To stand on my own two feet without crutches.
My gaze bores ahead, I see only my next action and my next and my next until once again my surroundings are quiet and the system warns me.
I look up, trying to ascertain what is happening even as the mana shields around buckle with the others a few meters back calling me.
But then I feel the enemy’s numbers.
Some 12 thousand elves hiding in their church, now a little less cramped and the lighting that I was calling from the sky forced their territory to a fraction of what it had been. Little more than 100 meters wide. Smaller than even their original village and about a tenth of the area we saw a couple of hours ago.
So I walk away, glad that my other half had more presence of mind, to stop anything that might have happened after I gave myself entirely to the attack.
Then we both reintegrate and even without the skill technically active, I can still use it as a bridge to the seed and share what we learned more purposefully than ruffling through jumbled memories.
And best of all, I even get hints of the memories and a faint direct connection to the mind of the seed he bonded with.
Another way to train and to further integrate our minds together, but for now, I can only do this with this single seed. To grow this connection I will need even more pieces of my mind.
“Are you back?” Paul asks me with his faint smile.
“Yes.”
He nods simply and we all make our way back as I hold it together after having exerted my mental and physical body to the limits. A few minutes later when everyone is in their spots on the flying buses and I get ready to take off flying even without a shell around me, Paul says something more:
“If I didn’t know you, I would think we were losing you. You went deep into the madness there. We even called you on the comm but you didn’t answer.”
“I… Have some things to figure out, both my body and mind. I can push them even further than I thought was possible. That…” I say pointing back to the city… “Was just a taste of what I can really do, and I can’t do everything I can to protect our people.”
“And you are still level 100 and without any skills over the threshold.”
A faint smile shines on my face.
“Ohh, but I just got a very interesting skill. One that lets me split my brain in half.”
“I got that one too.” He says and I frown in confusion until I see his mischievousness hiding behind a stony expression. “Spear Mastery.”
“Yes, very funny,” I say imitating him. Then I relax and keep going. “I have to figure out why the system was trying to stop me from getting the skill and why I haven’t gotten one in ages.”
“Good luck with that, the system hoards its secrets zealously.”
My gaze shows I’m not afraid of the challenge and he just chuckles walking back to his own flying bus.
I cycle Qi into the floating runes inside my body and spin around to take one last look at the elven city.
Today I made a few important realizations, now I just have to follow through and not let the hundreds of side projects try to take over my attention and distract me.