Shit, shit, shit, shit!

Jabari had got to be kidding him with this level of madness. Seth ducked a swinging tail that took out an entire tree whole, ripping it off the ground.

Aren’t these things supposed to be indestructible, he panicked as he slid across the rough ground, scurried to the side, and came up to his feet.

He faced a single opponent today, one he’d been facing for three days now. So far he’d faced it six times, each instance ending with Jabari saving him.

There was no way this creature was anything less than Iron. He looked at the tree lying in the dirt and reevaluated his stance on the beast’s rank, a massive Guda Snake that made the one he’d fought in the winter test look like a younger, less experienced sibling. That has got to be silver rank. Is he trying to get me killed?

He ran forward, charging at it as he weaved around trees that he’d hoped would interfere with its attack but didn’t. All it did was swipe its tail and the force was enough to take out an entire tree.

Varmei and Dainik remained sheathed at his side as he moved. He’d fought the snake alternating through different tactics over the days. This had taught him one irrefutable truth: he could not face the thing while losing so much reia. So he needed to use Varmei at critical moments. Only when necessary.

It was a logical tactic, an intelligent one, if he did say so. Now, all he had to do was create that necessary moment. Because at this rate, he might as well be carrying both weapons for fun.

His attention wavered to the side, at the edge of his senses he felt something massive flying at him and he dived into a roll. A massive tree bulldozed its way through the air and crashed into another.

“Now you’re throwing projectiles,” he cussed under his breath. How was he supposed to win against a giant snake smart enough to throw stuff at him?

And when was Jabari coming to end this round and declare him the loser? He needed time to think, to plan. He needed time to change strategy. All this running around was doing him no good. He was far from tiring out, but the rate at which Varmei was slowly but steadily draining him of reia just by being strapped to his side would ensure his eventual fatigue.

He picked out a tree ten paces from him and took a corner around a tree, making his way for it. If he was fast enough, he could lose the snake in the chase.

His senses were one of the things that had benefited from this month of madness Jabari had put him through. With the silence of his minds lasting so long, he’d been forced to pay attention to things they usually paid attention to for him. In the beginning, surviving a fight without their constant warning had cost him dearly. Blows they brought to his attention from his blind spot had done more damage than they had any right to. This had forced him to pay more attention. His minds had always told him they were doing nothing special, simply using the senses he already had.

With that clue alone he’d decided if the senses were truly his, then there had to be a way to use them just as well. [Fractured Mind] was the final piece of the puzzle he needed to accomplish this. Each time he activated the skill his senses sharpened. He could hear the groaning of a single branch on a tree fifteen feet away. He could feel the mild shifting of stale air in the atmosphere, decipher which way it would go when it chose to migrate. When the skill was deactivated his reach reduced. Taking clues from the sensation of [Fractured Mind] he found control of his senses. He did not know things in details, just in vague notions. For instance, a massive tree flying at him registered as something massive. In truth, it could be a tree or a car and he wouldn’t know.

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He got to the tree he sought faster than he thought. Once he did, he scaled it with a proficiency gained from climbing a tall tower just to listen to a priest talk for more than five months. When he got to the top, his senses lit up with danger. Something massive was coming at him from the side.

When he turned, it was to the sight of the Guda Snake’s massive, gaping mouth.

He pulled Varmei and Dainik on panicked instinct.

Shit.

………………………………………………………….

This was the fifth day since he’d brought the boy to this particular fissure. There were other fissures Jabari could’ve taken him to, but he only found it fitting that a path that started with a Guda Snake, end with one.

Today he watched the boy take a more direct approach than usual. Today he actually fought the snake. This was saying a lot since he’d done naught but run the past few days.

He went after the snake, keeping a considerable number of trees about them. He snaked around each one so he would be a hard target to hit. Each time the beast thought it had him, it would find its attack landing against a tree.

This was good.

For starters the boy was beginning to move like an observer. He watched his surrounding now, kept them about him like a massive cloak in winter. Where he’d once allowed his minds guide him, he guided himself. If Jabari was an observer in the sense, he would’ve been proud. But he was not.

Seth mistimed a particularly close evasion and took a massive tail to the back. The blow carried him across a distance, thirty feet swirling through the air. It was thirty feet without a tree to stop him and he hit the ground heavily. It was not the first time. It would not be the last.

Jabari almost caught himself in a smile.

To any who watched they would praise the boy’s luck. He had no doubt the boy praised his own luck. But they would be wrong, as the boy was wrong. It was the way with observers, people who constantly watched the world, and often times more. They did it enough that even their bodies became observers. An observer who knew where everything was would rarely ever run into something they did not want to.

Seth was definitely moving like an observer as well. He knew the boy did not know this. He also knew it did not matter. So he sat where he sat and watched what he watched. It would not be long before the child hit convergence. With all the poison inside him, his completely purified reia, and the power of his body, his evolution would be particularly nasty. Its only rival would likely be Oluwatimilehi’s Adio’s evolution from two weeks ago. But it was to be expected. The child had a dead god watching over him.

Again, he found himself contemplating his decisions regarding the child. He terminated the thought, cast it aside like a cut tail. That done, he recalled the part of his mind that had given itself to it to the present.

In the present, Seth drew Varmei along the side of his opponent. It was a weak slash, the cut too shallow. It barely drew any blood. When the snake struck at him, he was already gone, Varmei already sheathed. Perhaps, for the sake of his evolution, a familiar weapon would be of help.

Jabari reached into his cassock, dipped his hand into its pocket, and withdrew Masamune. Varmei and Dainik had served their true purpose; purifying his reia. There was no need for them anymore. All they did now was force his core to work harder, to struggle to replenish his reserves by themselves. With his breathing technique he did so slowly.

They served no other purpose now.

Seth fought on, moving between trees and the wind, ducking blows strong enough to take his head in a single strike, fighting an opponent the world demanded he had no right to win. Jabari watched all this with the removed interest of a man grooming a bonsai he intended to born in two nights.

In his hands, Masamune trembled at his touch. It was calling for blood as it often did. He doubted it would have any today. Though, there were shifting futures in one of which it drew blood on this day. But it was one in many. A possibility, as are all things, but a near implausibility.

Still, he had intentions for it.

He held it over his head, point facing forward, and threw it. In a display of an accuracy he always had, it buried itself in the ground just beside Seth as he came away from the snake with a backward step that carried him far and fast enough to only be explained as a skill and Seth snatched up the sword without thought.

There was a future somewhere where he achieved convergence today. There was another where he achieved it in another month. Another where he achieved it in two more days. But there was also a future somewhere where he never did.

Jabari ignored all of them. The child would either achieve convergence, or he would not.