Day 8
Early Afternoon
Erin arrived in the livingroom to a bored-looking Mrs. McGibbons, a lost-looking Eun-ha, and an excited-looking Noah. But no Zack this time. “Where’d Zack go?”
Mrs. McGibbons fielded this question, “We sent him back to that dojo place to tell the others not to do anything stupid. We had to promise to find a way to help, but he thinks he can convince the others not to get themselves killed.”
“Good.” Erin was relieved to hear that. She didn’t so much make friends at Gumiho as connect with peers, but she didn’t want them getting hurt. “Has everyone opened their reward boxes and applied their attributes?”
“Noah is being very helpful with mine, Ttarai.” Her mother responded despite the zoned out look she wore while focused on the HUD.
“Noah, how about yours?”
“I’m good. I went through mine first so I could advise your mom and Mrs. McGibbons.” As he said this, he looked at the latter, “Did you put points into vitality, Mrs. McGibbons? You look…umm…younger?”
“Nonsense, boy, put points into perception.” Mrs. McGibbons sounded like she was trying to get rid of him, but her voice lacked the bite of all those times she would yell at kids on the street.
Noah scrunched up his face in response, “I did, Mrs. McGibbons. 10 points. It’s my 3rd highest stat.”
All he got in return was a “pfft.”
“Speaking of, what’s your highest stat before and after, Noah?” Erin turned her attention back to him.
“Umm…same before and after. I had…umm…21 intelligence before…and…now it’s 53.” Noah seemed a bit nervous to admit this in front of everyone.
“Wait…what!?!?” Erin gawked at the 15 year old kid. “You had to be a certified genius before. How did you put…what…32 points into that stat alone?”
“Oh, well…umm…I put 30 points into it, and two points came from the level bonus. I had…96 points to spend…”
Erin shook her head, “I thought my 66 points were excessive, even for 5 additional levels. That’s wild, Noah.”
“Hon, you got the least number of points out of everyone here…except maybe Mrs. McGibbons. She won’t tell us anything.” Eun-ha shifted her attention from the HUD to Erin for a moment.
“And here I thought I was doing pretty well. I’m going out back to practice. Not sure that the practice dummy I put together will hold up to me anymore.”
“Okay Ye-rin, I’ll put a bucket and towel near the door in a bit. I don’t want you tracking dirt through Mrs. McGibbons’ house again. Oh, and I love your new dobok! It looks amazing on you!”
Mrs. McGibbons snorted at that and mumbled something that sounded like, “Not the worst thing I’ve spilled on these floors.”
Erin just thanked her mom and walked outside to the back yard.
Before she started beating on the practice dummy, Erin decided to work on some forms, and maybe shadow box the air. Slow motions at first without the snap and punch she would use on a dummy or in sparring. As she worked through her forms, she could feel there was more energy in the movements, more responsiveness, but it was hard to put her finger on it.
Erin decided to move up to half-speed, half-strength. Her first kick moved so quickly she almost spun and fell on her ass. “Woah…” She threw more kicks at the air and felt her body adjust to the power and speed. Dropping an axe kick down she let it hit the ground where a target could be, and watched a one foot section of grass and dirt compact in a shallow crater. “Oh, that’s gonna hurt to get hit by.”
Decided to test the practice dummy with just punches at a quarter speed and strength, Erin stepped up and squared herself. An open palm strike caused a slight buckle in the wood, a cracking sound reaching her ears. Trying a knife hand strike, she felt a tingle, then her hand blurred. Where her attack landed the tire tread looked slightly melted.
“Did…did I just release Ki?” She checked her HUD but the Ki bar was full. She decided to go for glancing blows while trying to bring out that feeling again. One, two, three, a tingle but no release. Again, one, two, three, the tingle was a bit more pronounced but no Ki released.
“Okay, more hits then.” One, two, tingle, three, tingle, four, release. Her attack narrowly missed one of the side treads, but there was a clear channel melted in it now. She went again. One, two, tingle, three, release, four, tingle, five, release, six, release, seven, release.
Pulling back, she saw that her right hand had a shimmer around it and the tingling hadn’t subsided. Looking at her HUD, the Ki bar was now down a dozen or so points, and losing one point every 2-3 seconds. Focusing on releasing the sensation, she felt the tingling fade. Her Ki bar started filling and was back to full in roughly 5 seconds.
“Now, can I bring it back?” Erin held her fist in front of her face, focusing on creating the tingling sensation again. After a minute of trying unsuccessfully, she growled, then tried remembering all the different sage wisdoms spread throughout movie and television over the years.
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Focusing on her fist again, she said, “There is no spoon…” Nothing happened.
”Do or do not!” Still nothing.
“Flame on?”
“Spoon!?”
“Fear is the mind killer?”
Erin Craned her neck back, feeling ridiculous, she sighed heavily in frustration…and felt a tingle…
She brought her hand back up to her face, breathed in deeply, then slowly let it out. Her hand tingled, and then started to shimmer. “It’s not a push, it’s a release!” Holding both hands out in front of her, Erin breathed out, releasing the Ki. Her body tingled everywhere, and she could see the shimmer on her hands and arms, and down her body. Based on how the Ki bar was draining, the more of her body releasing Ki, the more was drained. Covering her body was close to 1 Ki per second.
She stepped back up to the training dummy and started striking at it with more glancing blows. Her strikes carved melted channels wherever they came close. Increasing her speed, she watched as every second that passed resulted in at least three new marks in the tire treads, until one strip fell off. Falling onto her wrist first, she could feel it bubbling before sliding to the ground. Looking at her wrist, there were no signs of harm. Like the Ki was melting the tread material and still protecting her skin.
Erin tried to pick up the strip of tread, but everytime she touched it, that area started to melt and bubble, her fingers sliding off of it. Pulling her Ki back in, she briefly noticed the bar filling in the top right of her HUD as she reached once again for the tread strip. Despite parts of it still bubbling, it wasn’t painful to touch.
“Incredible.” Erin breathed the word out like a last gasp. “It’s warm, but…not burning.”
Erin kept training with releasing her Ki, both from standing still, and while mid-combo, until she could do it without using breathing as a guide. When she felt that could be done smoothly, she started testing out activating her ability, Dragon King’s Wrath. Abilities were, seemingly, easier to activate, as that could be done with a thought.
When Erin activated the ability for the first time, her eyes went wide at the dent it put in her Ki. Out of 647 Ki, just the initial activation ate 100 of that. It took a couple tries to calculate the drain, but it was far more than her normal Ki release. This was around 4 Ki per second. 240 Ki per minute. If she activated it from full Ki, she could maintain it for a little over two minutes before running out.
The upside was the, roughly, 300% increase in Strength, Perception, Defence, and Speed. Strength by itself increased Attack Power and Defence, so it was kind of a double boost. Perception increased Evasion, which was almost another double boost with Speed. If she fought someone who could last thirty seconds against that, let alone two minutes, she would have bigger issues.
So she could use Ki across her whole body for a small boost and a slower drain, or activate her Wrath ability and gain a massive boost for a significantly faster drain. The trade-off wasn’t terrible, but she needed to be strategic with it.
As Erin tested her abilities with Ki, she started to get a feel for the regeneration rate. When not in use, it was replenishing at roughly 10 Ki per second. Not bad, but she knew that needed to be boosted, if for no other reason than to be able to use Ki non-stop. Also, 34 seconds to get enough Ki to both activate and use Wrath for just one minute…that was an eternity in a fight.
It wasn’t long before darkness started to fill the sky again, and Erin slowed her training routine. She wanted the others to think her energy was waning, and she needed to think through her plan. Keeping a fairly simple and repeatable series of movements, Erin brought up her inventory screen. She had glossed over those other items she received, thinking maybe one has an ability she overlooked.
“Dammit!” She cursed herself almost immediately. The charm she received, from a particularly stupid, in her mind, reward box. She needed something to attach it to, and she received just the thing, a necklace. Pulling the description up on her HUD, Erin read the details of the necklace.
Gold Necklace of Focus
Quality Level: Gold
Description: A golden necklace of gold quality. Aside from appearing to be 24k gold, it lacks any intricacies.
Modifier: Focus. This necklace provides improvements to the wearer’s focus. This can manifest as improvements to learning while in a trance-like state of focus, or perceiving details in an environment otherwise difficult to notice, but requires the user to stop and fully focus on the environment.
Notes: Bling is supposed to make people focus on you, not make you focus on other things. Just remember to be in a safe space while focusing, or someone bad may focus on you!
It had a beneficial ability that probably could have improved her training this afternoon. She also found it ironic that it could have helped her focus on her reward boxes while opening them, ensuring she didn’t miss exactly this. Equipping the necklace, then charm, it disappeared from inventory and appeared on the necklace around her neck without fanfare.
There would be no testing the new charm with that 24 hour cooldown and 1 minute active timer, so she would need to be smart about using it. She had some training with her new abilities, and the cover of night. Now it was time to start acting on her plan. All of her hopeful thoughts went out the window in the next couple seconds with a System message.
New quest!
Save the Old Man
Description: The Antagonist has given Ryu Jin-soo one hour to live. If someone doesn’t rescue him by then, who knows what terrible things might be added on to his already terrible torture. Get to the apartments at 8th & Main before one hour is up. Alternatively, if you can’t save him, you damn well better get vengeance for him.
Rewards: Calculated based on your performance.
Penalties: Crippling self-doubt? Explosive rage? A week-long bender at TGIFs? There are no wrong answers.
“Dammit!” She was going to pretend to go to bed, sneak out the window, and hope that no one noticed so they wouldn’t worry or try to stop her. Now she was on a time limit. Releasing her Ki into her legs, Erin launched herself, overshooting the fence, the house, the sidewalk, and landing in the street. She took off at a full sprint, Ki fueling her muscles to blinding speeds as she raced towards the apartment.
Seconds after she took off a lone figure in a jean vest stalking behind a thick bush accessed his private messages and sent a single short communication.
“She’s on her way.”
At the same time, someone else sent the exact same message to a very different recipient, for very different reasons.