Through fits of laughter, both by Jack and himself, he told him the entire story from beginning to end, including where she may have made the assumption that she would need to convince Jack the same way she tried to convince him. Jack had been annoyed with him until he got a quarter of the way through the story, but he caught on quick on what had happened.
“For a moment I thought you told her that she would need to screw me to get a tablet, who knows what she thinks you did for one.” Jack had given him the food, only after he heard the whole story. “I get that it’s a stressful situation for you all, and even on our world we have the saying about screwing your way to the top, but damn, its day one.” He chuckled to himself for a second. “Succubus though, fitting name.”
“So, what did she actually do to you?” he hadn’t asked until now, although he was desperate to hear his side of the story.
“I was sitting there, minding my own business and having my dinner. She walks right over to me, which whatever, I don’t care. But instead of taking a seat on the opposite side of the table, she slides right up next to me, sitting practically on top of me. I asked her if she needed something, because why else would she be right next to me. Then out of nowhere she whispers in my ear ‘What’s it going to take to get a tablet just like Mike’s’. Before I could even reply she reaches under the table and grabs a hold of me! She bit my damn ear! I jumped up so damn quick that I nearly flipped the table. After that I grabbed you a tray and made a run for it! She eyed me the entire freaking time like I was a snack! She is freaking terrifying! I am seriously just going to slide a tablet under her door and hope she leaves me the hell alone.”
He couldn’t help but laugh, it sounded pretty much like he had expected, if not a little more aggressive. He understood the desire to want to stay away from her though, she was a predator through and through. If she managed to get into The Academy, he could only imagine how far she would go.
“You have a new schedule by the way. Because you are ahead with Owl, you can go at the beginning of every class and check that you are passing. If you have passed that days topic you go straight back to the field with Sonar. Then lunch, then because you have already passed the class with Wraith, you are right back with Sonar.” He knew he was going to be stuck with something like this, but hearing it made it a reality. “I feel for you. Sonar is a hard ass but trust me when I say its nothing compared to the combat and conditioning classes in The Academy. Get an early night, you’re going to need all the rest you can get.”
Jack took the now empty tray from him and left without saying anything more. He didn’t want to sleep straight away so finished off the section on Champions. Afterwards he let sleep claim him, not waking until his tablet went off in the morning.
Like the previous morning, he gave himself enough time to shower and get ready as well as review all of his notes on the topics he had already covered. He was nothing if not a dedicated student.
At breakfast he noticed that nearly everyone now had a tablet, an interesting development. Either Jack cracked and gave everyone one or Tess had decided to cultivate favour and exchange information for whatever the hell she wanted.
He left the common area as soon as he finished eating, a number of people gave him snarky looks and waived their tablets around as if to say, not so special now are you. All of this he ignored, it had no impact on him whether they had tablets or not, at this point he just wanted to be able to make it through a full day of training with Sonar without losing consciousness.
He made his way to the training field, knowing that getting warmed up and stretched wasn’t going to happen during class. He half expected Sonar to be waiting for him when he got outside, but when he got there, it was completely empty. When he had woken up this morning he still felt stiff, but he had gained back the strength to be able to walk without issue. Even after everything he had gone through the day before, he was in better shape than most of the others.
“How’s it going kid? Enjoy your nap?” It took everything he had not to bite back at the words. He was halfway through stretching out his body when Sonar appeared, unlike the day before though, he wasn’t frustrated at a failed mediation attempt.
“It was pleasant Instructor Sonar. I really needed it.” He was not going to take the bait, not this time. Rather he would treat Sonar like he had every other teacher he had in the past. Maybe a touch more snarky, but within he bounds of what was reasonable, for now anyway. The guy knew how to push him, and not in the best way either.
“We haven’t had the chance to talk about physical cultivation yet, not in any real detail. That should be fine for this morning though, but if I see you getting to far ahead of yourself I will knock you out of it. Your task though, is to see how much you can learn by yourself. You know your stats, what percent you have in each sub attribute. Let’s see if you can increase any of them in the next two hours. You know the risk of opening any more gates at this point, don’t be an idiot and try to open more.”
Sonar left him alone after that, he did another quick check of his Overview and there were no changes. His percentages were 1, 3 and 5 in control, attunement and density respectively. He also didn’t need to be reminded of what would happen if he opened another gate, it would be death. Until all of his sub attributes were closing in on 100%, he couldn’t open another gate without serious consequences.
The warning from Sonar was odd, but it also gave him some information that he tucked away for when he started training. From what Sonar said he should be able to increase the sub attributes while he was working out, he hadn’t been actively trying to open a gate the day before, but he had deducted that the increased pain in his chest was a result of bringing Spirit into his body until his gate was filled to bursting, resulting in a massive amount of pain when it opened.
Now that he knew the signs, he felt confident he would be able to stop if he got close to opening another gate, but no one had explained to him how he could increase his sub attributes through physical cultivation, which was where the test from Sonar came in.
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It didn’t take long before everyone started to come out into the training field after breakfast, he didn’t really take note of how many though as his mind was trying to figure out how he could increase his percentages.
“33, you are dropping like flies. You know the drill, one warm up lap, two running and one warm down. Go.”
He took off, excited to get started. Not only was he getting to do something he loved, but at the same time he was now getting to try to learn something new. Something that would help him get stronger and progress.
It took him longer than usual to get in the rhythm of things and reach his calming state, mostly because he was too excited and his mind wasn’t letting him get into the groove of things. Eventually he managed to calm down enough and just revert back to thinking about his movement and breathing, but he had lost half a lap due his emotions.
When he did manage to get into the rhythm of just running he was able to then redirect his thoughts inwards. Wraith had said that the process of increasing Spirit was all about bringing Spirit into the body through breathing and making it your own. But that was the process of just adding more Spirit to open new gates. What he needed to know was how would you change that up when trying to increase the sub attributes.
Control was all about your ability to adjust to how much Spirit you used when doing something, predominantly when activating your skill. Attunement was how adjusted your body was to Spirit and Density was all about how condensed the Spirit you had inside of you was.
As he continued going around the field, now at a run, he tried to focus on where the pain had been in his chest from when he opened his gate, seeing if he could get some kind of feeling from it to give him some clue as to what he was supposed to do. He kept up his breathing and focus as he did, seeing if he could gain some kind of insight into the entire process.
It took an entire lap of just running when he noticed the first thing that gave him a hint as to what was happening. Unlike before, where he assumed the Spirit he was taking in was getting pushed to the centre of his chest, he felt something similar to that feeling, but instead of where the gate was, it was higher up and to the right, in the centre of his pectoral muscle.
He wasn’t certain, couldn’t be after a day in this strange world, but he made the assumption that this new spot was where his second gate was, and that meant he was pushing Spirit to it, which was not what he was supposed to be doing.
What he wanted instead, was to push it into the first gate, or anywhere else in his body. To do that though he needed some level of control over the Spirit. Having not being told how this all worked, he did the only thing he could think of in this situation and tried to visualise what he wanted at the same as he redirected his thoughts and practically pleaded for the Spirit to go to the first gate and not the second one.
It was literally the only thing he could think of doing to stop him from pushing any further with the second gate. He didn’t stop his running while he did this, he had a vague idea of where he was running, but his focus wasn’t on his surroundings, it was on himself. He didn’t know when he felt the change, it could have taken seconds or minutes, but slowly he felt a shift in where the Spirit was going inside of him.
The only reason he could sense anything at all was because the Spirit inside of him, which he could feel to some degree, was like having something foreign inside of you. It felt weird, but not in a painful way anymore, closer to just the feeling of knowing that there is something there that wasn’t there before.
Slowly his awareness of Spirit got better, and with it he managed to slowly shift ore of the Spirit he was taking in towards the first gate. When the excess Spirit reached it, it didn’t want to stay there though, he had to visually and mentally force it in until it had no choice but to form with the gate. It wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences and it took a lot of his concentration to do it. If it wasn’t for the years of training he had put himself through, he would have easily tripped over his own feet, landing face first on the ground. Thank god for muscle memory.
Now that he had gained some king of control over Spirit, he wanted to test out a second theory. When reading about Demons it said that Spirit was infused into their body. Although it was related to materials and their worth, it made him think that attuning one’s body for a human, meant imbuing your body with Spirit, not just the Spirit Gates. It would explain how the higher ranked Demons had more valuable body parts, because they had more Spirit. It would potentially make them stronger, which in turn made them more deadly.
It was just a hypothesis, but one that, in his mind made sense. He switched his visualisation and pleading, now instead of directing the Spirit he was inhaling towards his gate, he imagined it going down into his legs. What made this even more difficult than just directing it to his gate was that the idea of pushing Spirit into only one leg seemed unnatural, that in turn meant he had to now try to focus on not just one place in his body but two. All the while he had to somehow, consciously, split the Spirit he was taking in, sending some to his right leg and some to his left.
It was much harder to do, but he now had the idea in his mind and he was stubborn enough that he persisted, wanting to see if his assumptions had been correct. The process of redirecting Spirit to the furthest part of his body from his chest was excruciating, not just mentally but physically.
The moment he started to get somewhere with this plan he felt his body start to burn. It wasn’t his entire body though, it was more a pathway from his chest down his abdomen and then down through his legs, his arms left perfectly fine.
What he didn’t realise was that he was so in the zone that he hadn’t heard Sonar yelling at him, if he had he would have known to stop. Instead, he resorted to his more usually method of punishment. Out of nowhere, or at least nowhere for Mike, he felt a lashing, one that was much harder then any before, slice across his calves, causing him to break out of what he was doing and crash straight into the ground.
When he finally gained enough awareness of what had happened, he had to blink a few times to wake himself up. He looked back to where Sonar was standing and was shocked to that everyone else in the class was gone, Sonar wasn’t alone though. Next to him stood Wraith and the Headmaster, all standing side by side and waiting patiently for him to come over.
He got himself up from the ground, he felt himself shake as he did. He felt weak, practically devoid of energy. He was also confused, had they cleared everyone else from the field early? Or had he been running for that long? He made his way over to where he was expected, he pushed through the feeling of wanting to pass out, not wanting to appear weak in front of the people he was trying to impress. By the time he made it over to them he just wanted to crawl up in a ball and sleep. He didn’t think he was going to get that chance though.
“Mike, if you wouldn’t mind?” Headmaster Yasgard put the tablet he was holding in front of him, he knew what this meant, they wanted to see his Overview. To be honest so did he. At the same time he placed his hand on the tablet he brought up his Overview to see if for himself.
“Holy shit!” His attributes had increased, and not by a small amount either.
Name
Michael Winset
Age
18
Spirit
Gates Unlocked: 1
Control: 12%
Attunement: 15%
Density: 23%
Skill
Spirit Mastery
Level: 1
Max Level: XXX
Evolution: No
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