Victor sat before Dar, waiting for his next words. His master’s face was relaxed, the fire in his eyes simmering low, but he knew, like coals, they were ready to ignite with the faintest breath of oxygen. So, he waited patiently, not willing to provide that fuel. The Spirit Master had just spent nearly two hours describing the method of gathering Energy from his various sources—how to weave the different aspects together and pull them into his Core. Victor had been about to make his first try at it, when Dar had said, “I must study your Core.” And then he’d, apparently, begun to do so, staring at Victor, unblinking for nearly another hour.
Finally, just as Victor was starting to fear Dar had fallen asleep with his eyes open, the man’s stony countenance shifted, his eyes moving to lock onto Victor’s. The master took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “The cultivation method I just described isn’t going to work. Not yet. The entire point of cultivating for you, rather than growing your Core, is to learn to harmonize your affinities and embrace every aspect of your spirit whilst tempering the more destructive aspects through the lens of the more positive. Your Core, however, is in disarray. I see what you’ve done. I believe I even understand why you did it. It’s simply not ideal. No,” he chuckled, “not even an approximation of ideal.”
“What I’ve done?”
“In the development of your Core. It makes a kind of sense; I can see how you’ve tried to create counterbalances between your various affinities—inspiration against rage, glory against fear, a sort of light versus dark side in your spirit, pushing and pulling against each other. The problem is that your affinities aren’t equal, and even if they were—a near impossibility—they contend with each other rather than building upon each other.”
“Well, it’s not like I had a teacher. Not really.” Victor’s mind flitted to Gorz and then Old Mother—both had provided guidance, but neither had ever talked to him about the actual structure of his Core. Not even Khul Bach had broached the topic.
“I know. I can see the logic in your efforts. Energy tends to compress into a sphere; it’s the easiest way to build up the density and then break it through into the next stage. As you gained more affinities, you naturally assumed you should have more spheres of Energy. It’s not a terrible thing, but there’s a much better, more elegant design that I want to teach you. It’s better because it will shore up the less volatile aspects of your spirit, using your stronger affinities to compress them.
“You see, Victor, considering this formation, I’m somewhat astounded by the strength of your spirit and Core. You’ve essentially split your Core into four smaller ones. Rather than compounding them, using the weight of each affinity to compress the ones beneath it, your cultivation has revolved around building each one individually, pushing them to a breaking point before advancing the level of your Core. I’m not sure you’d ever break through into epic tier with this structure.
“The design I’ll teach you will combine the weight—the gravity—of each affinity, creating a single Core that will be far denser and stronger than these four individual ones. Moreover, it will take your most valuable aspect and put it closer to your spirit while keeping the others, the ones that tend to overwhelm your spirit, at a bit of a distance.”
“My most valuable aspect?” Victor guessed Dar would confirm his suspicion that his rage was the most valuable part of his Core, but he was surprised by the master’s response.
“Your inspiration, lad. It’s quite a rare affinity and one that any Spirit Caster would be wise to cultivate if they could. In fact, I suspect that affinity is responsible for much of your uncanny success and strength. You may feel you’re ‘lucky’ for learning a rare, treasured ability like Sovereign Will or that your hard work is what led you to the Paragon of the Axe, and to some degree, you’d be right, but I believe your easily inspired nature has been a large influence in your growth. Thank the old gods that you’ve had some positive influences in your recent development.”
When Dar said the last bit, Victor saw a parade of faces run through his mind’s eye: Yrella and Vullu from the Wagon Wheel, Lam in the mines, Old Mother, Thayla, Tellen, Tes, and even his enemies, like the Warlord and his subordinates. He did take inspiration from many sources—there was no denying it. “So, even though it’s not my strongest affinity?”
Dar chuckled, clicking his tongue and shaking his head in admiration. “Aye, you lean toward the others more, but your affinity to inspiration is by no means weak. All of your affinities are absurdly strong.”
Victor nodded. He didn’t want to argue. His rage had, without a doubt, kept him alive in many desperate situations, but he liked his inspiration more. If Dar thought he should bring that closer to his spirit, whatever that meant, then he wouldn’t argue. “What do I do?”
“This will not be easy, especially with your Core sitting on the cusp of epic. If I recall correctly, you told me it is ranked advanced-nine, yes?”
Victor nodded but looked at the Energy and Core section of his status again to be certain:
Breath Core:
Elder Class - Improved 3
Core:
Spirit Class - Advanced 9
Breath Core Affinity:
Magma - 9
Breath Core Energy:
2200/2200
Energy Affinity:
Fear 9.4, Rage 9.1, Glory 8.6, Inspiration 7.4, Unattuned 3.1
Energy:
25407/25407
“I believe this new formation will push you over into epic. Such tension will make the reshaping process incredibly difficult. I’m pleased you’ve worked so hard to cultivate your will because you’ll need it.” He paused, then snapped his fingers. “Didn’t you mention a natural treasure from the challenge dungeon? Something for breakthroughs?”
“Oh.” Victor nodded, mentally sifting through his dimensional containers. “I did, yes. Something like a berry, but bigger.” He found it and summoned the fruit onto his palm.
Dar peered closely at the plump, blue, apple-sized fruit, reading the label. “Perfect! An Urd Berry—useful for a difficult breakthrough!”
“Should I eat it?” Victor’s mouth was already filling with saliva at just a hint of the fruit’s fragrance.
“Patience! First, I must describe the process. You’ll need to focus on your Core space, and, using the strength of your will, you’ll need to arrange the four orbs of your affinities into a stack, with inspiration at the bottom, then glory, then rage, and finally, at the top, fear.”
“I thought I wanted inspiration at the top?”
“No! Patience, welp!” Dar growled, and his eyes flared momentarily. “This will be a tremendous battle for your will, so listen carefully lest you hobble yourself with a lopsided, mangled Core!” He glared for a moment, ensuring Victor would remain quiet and pay attention, then said, “Once you’ve created the stack, as I said, the real battle will begin. You will use part of your will to hold the stack in place while stretching the orb of your glory-attuned Energy into a ring, encircling your inspiration-attuned Energy.
“If you do it correctly, you’ll feel it snap into place, and you’ll no longer have to exert your will to hold the glory around your inspiration. After that’s done, you’ll repeat the process with rage, stretching it to encircle your glory. The ring will be larger but narrower as it has to stretch further. Finally, you’ll complete the process with your fear-attuned Energy, pulling it into a ring that encompasses the others.”
Before Victor could ask the half dozen questions burning to escape his mouth, Dar continued, “Each ring will be an order of magnitude harder to shape. The resistance will increase, but so, too, will the compression as it snaps into place. This is what will push your Core toward the next tier—the different affinities working with each other instead of against each other as they’re currently arrayed. I think you’ll be able to complete the first ring without the fruit, so save it. When you begin to shape the rage ring, that will be the time to consume it.”
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Victor nodded, visualizing what Dar described. He could picture it, the inspiration at the center, still a compact, glowing sphere, with each of the other affinities wrapped around it in layers. “Um, how will this bring inspiration ‘closer to my spirit?’ I mean, aren’t they all still in my Core?”
Dar nodded, leaning back to look down his nose at Victor. “A good question. This is an advanced topic, but one you should contemplate as you approach your test of steel and beyond. Your spirit is tied to your physical form through a pathway, not unlike your Energy pathways. This pathway breaches the veil between planes at the very center of your Core. With inspiration there, every other affinity must pass through it before it can touch your spirit. Moreover, the outermost affinity, fear, will also need to pass through rage and glory.”
Victor’s eyes widened with understanding. “So, right now, all of my affinities can touch my spirit equally?”
“They could if you had equal affinities. As it is, your rage and fear get through more often. This new Core structure will change you, Victor. You may not notice it right away, but you will start to experience your rage and fear to a lesser degree. What makes it through to your spirit will be colored by your glory and inspiration.
“This was the entire point of the cultivation drill I’ve taught you—how to filter the fear and rage-attuned Energy through your other affinities, primarily your inspiration. It will grant you a greater measure of control over those powerful emotions. They’ll still be a part of you, still powerful, especially when turned outward into the structure of a spell, but they’ll influence you less.”
“Will it mean my Volcanic Rage won’t make me lose control?” Victor had high hopes of holding onto that spell's tremendous power while keeping his Iron Berserk's rationality.
“No. That spell has an effect that you embrace when you cast it. Its destructive design is incredibly potent, but it opens your pathways wide to accept the rage in both your Cores. It will take improving the spell and strengthening your will to accomplish greater control. What reshaping your Core will do, Victor, is allow you to begin thinking in your day-to-day life without the constant, unfiltered influence of your fear and rage.”
“What if all I had was rage or fear? Is that what happened to the geist I captured?”
Dar nodded, glancing to his left where he’d placed the rib bone. “I’m sure that was part of her problem, aye. She likely cultivated fear to the exclusion of all else. You can imagine how that would shape a spirit, especially if she were allowed to run amok, unchallenged by someone stronger in her world.” Before Victor could ask another question, the giant smoothly stood and, looking down at Victor, said, “I’ve spoken enough today—more than I have all at once in years. You know what to do.”
Victor’s heart began to hammer in embarrassing panic, and he pushed it down, his pride refusing to allow it to show on his face. Of course, he’d wanted Dar to stick around to watch his progress, perhaps even helping somehow, but the way he’d been dismissed rankled something inside him, and he just nodded. “Thanks, Lord Dar.”
He didn’t doubt that Dar could read him like an open book, but the Master Spirit Caster didn’t let on. “I’ll know when you’re finished. We’ll talk more after that.” As he strode from the room, Victor almost called after him to ask that he let Valla know he’d miss lunch but changed his mind; she’d figure it out, and he didn’t want to sound so needy to the gruff, powerful man.
Frowning, gritting his teeth in angst, he turned his gaze inward and tried to control his racing thoughts. He took several deep, calming breaths, and then, staring at the four orbs of his Core, he gathered his will, contemplating the method of his attack. He decided to try to move his inspiration-attuned Energy first, pushing it closer to the other three orbs. Countless times, Victor had pulled Energy out of the orbs in his Core. Similarly, he’d gathered and pushed Energy into them more times than he could count, but he’d never tried to move one of those densely packed globes of thick, pulsing Energy.
When he began to exert the pressure of his will against the sphere of inspiration-attuned Energy, he felt it start to deform, bulging with the pressure, but then it stopped, and nothing more happened. Victor doubled down, pushing harder. He scowled in concentration and effort and bore down. Slowly at first, then with more and more momentum, he pushed it where he wanted it, near the center of his Core space, and definitely out of the original, almost circular pattern his four orbs had once maintained.
Nodding with satisfaction, Victor repeated the process, moving his glory-attuned orb atop the inspiration. It shifted more easily, perhaps because he’d started with a vicious jab of his will rather than a slow ramp-up. Wanting to maintain his momentum, Victor buckled down and drove his will against his rage orb, growling with the effort as beads of sweat emerged all over his scalp, running in rivulets down his forehead. Like a boulder breaking free of the stony soil, the red, glowering orb began to move, and Victor pushed with everything he had, driving it up and over to the top of the stack.
His initial placement of the inspiration orb was paying off; he’d arranged his three orbs so the empty spot near the top was close to his orb of fear-attuned Energy—he’d guessed it would be the hardest to move. His fear—Victor snorted at the thought—proved well-founded. The dark, purple-black orb, pulsing with slow, dread-filled beats, resisted his will for several long, strenuous minutes. Victor felt his ire rising but pushed it back, clearing his mind; rage might make him feel better, but it wouldn’t help his concentration, and it would almost certainly undermine his will.
He took a massive breath, filling his lungs to bursting, then bore down, concentrating on what he intended, bending that orb, that part of himself, to his resolute desire for it to move. If the rage orb had been a boulder, Victor’s fear moved like a glacier—a mountain—slowly, painfully, with tremendous gravity, sliding into position. “Chingado,” he hissed, brushing the rivulets of sweat off his face, shaking his head, and sending a fine mist of perspiration around the chamber. “That was the easy part?”
Victor stretched and breathed, trying to recharge his reserves as he realized he’d only just begun the task Dar had set before him. When he settled down and turned his gaze inward again, he was dismayed to see that his inspiration and glory-attuned orbs had begun to slide out of formation, pulled up around the rage by the fear-attuned orb. Victor cursed and forced them back into place, holding them still with his will. It was clear that, outside of the semi-circular, lopsided “balance” he'd managed to push his Core into, the fear was trying to take the central position. It was trying to pull the other orbs into a sort of orbit.
Once again, Victor took a deep breath, and, pushing all thoughts from his mind, he willed his glory-attuned Energy to begin stretching out. He pulled the largest tendril of Energy out of it that he could control, stretching it around the inspiration-attuned orb. The tendril kept trying to fly free, to drift through his Core space, back toward the orb of glory-attuned Energy. Victor held it firm, wrapping it down and around the inspiration orb and then up and back into itself.
Once he’d created that loop, things became a little easier—even though the Energy flowed back into the glory orb, his will held it firm around the inspiration orb, so it flowed like a river with a fat bulge at the top. From there, Victor used his will to manipulate strand after strand, flattening the orb as he built up one loop after another. When he could no longer see any evidence of the glory orb, and he just had a dozen thick strands of glory looping the inspiration orb, he pressed them together, squeezing, willing them all to combine.
When the strands of glory-attuned Energy combined into one thick rope, it snapped into place—a bright, golden, glittering ring around his white-gold, misty orb of inspiration. “Fuck yes!” he howled, pumping his fist. Victor felt like he’d just defeated a state champion and proven his legitimate claim to the title. He allowed himself a few minutes to relax and study his Core, basking in the pride of accomplishment.
What Dar hadn’t told him was that it wasn’t a two-dimensional ring. In that space, things had depth, and Victor felt more like he was looking at a multi-layered sun, somehow able to perceive it in a cross-section. He saw how the glory-attuned Energy hugged the inspiration-attuned Energy, how they interacted with each other, the wisps interlocking, clasping, pulling on each other. What he saw was no stack; it was a bond, and Victor couldn’t imagine the force of will it would take to undo what he’d done. The orbs of fear and rage, while heavy and dense, looked far less vibrant, less vital. Had he really had such an inferior Core all this time?
With renewed excitement, Victor picked up the fruit. He chuckled at his reluctance to call it a berry just because it was the size of an apple. In his massive hand, it looked enough like a berry. Maybe the world where it grew was populated by giants. “Or titans,” he chuckled, plucking the stem and plopping the whole thing into his mouth. It was the most delicious thing he could remember tasting. It tickled his tastebuds—tangy and sweet, but more than that, it burst with uncountable flavors, one rolling into the next as the juice washed over the flesh of his mouth, down his throat, and into his stomach.
Victor’s eyes were closed, but each new flavor, from vanilla to honey to cloves to citrus to a thousand others, seemed to send bursts of colorful light into his mind. He felt inspired but a thousand-fold more than he ever had with his inspiration spells. Everything felt possible. No, Victor decided, not possible—trivial.
He laughed as he considered his earlier struggles, and he turned to his rage-attuned orb of Energy and pulled a thin strand from it, looping his new inspiration and glory Core. It was easy, of course, to manipulate a single thread like that, and he kept pulling, looping it again and again around the Core. The thread wanted to go back into his rage orb, but it was nothing to keep it away. It was so easy that he started moving it faster, looping around the edge of the glory-attuned Energy.
It wasn’t hard to keep the thread, now in a hundred loops, bunched up. All it took was a slight pressure from his will while he continued to pull. A hundred loops became two hundred became five hundred, and then, to his delight, he no longer found any rage-attuned Energy to pull. Victor had stretched his entire supply of rage into a long, looping thread around his Core. With a forceful exertion of his will, he pressed the loops together, and with a jolt like a thunderbolt to his heart, the rage snapped into place.
He now had a dark red, vibrant band of hot, angry Energy that slowly bled into the band of glory-attuned Energy, turning from hot red to orange to yellow to white-gold as it seeped toward the center of his Core. Victor wanted to celebrate, wanted to study the beauty of his new Core—the sturdy, dense, powerful nature of it—but he was still riding high on the fruit he’d eaten and didn’t want to lose his momentum.
Just as he’d done with the rage, he began to stretch his fear-attuned Energy around his new Core. He thought it would be more challenging, that there would be some hidden difficulty, but despite the density of that fear-attuned orb, his other three affinities, working together, had far more gravity. It was almost effortless at this point to pull his fear out in a ribbon, wrapping it again and again, faster and faster, around his Core. When he’d stretched it to the limit, utterly diminishing the orb, he squeezed and, with a burst of blinding, soul-wrenching Energy, it snapped into place. Victor’s new, fully realized Core began to pulse like a neutron star, and System messages danced across his vision.
***Congratulations! You have advanced your Core: Epic 1.***
***Congratulations! You have constructed a unified, multi-layered Core. Your total Energy reflects the potential of any of your affinities.***
Grinning from ear to ear, Victor pulled up his Energy stats again:
Breath Core:
Elder Class - Improved 3
Core:
Spirit Class – Epic 1
Breath Core Affinity:
Magma - 9
Breath Core Energy:
2200/2200
Energy Affinity:
Fear 9.4, Rage 9.1, Glory 8.6, Inspiration 7.4, Unattuned 3.1
Energy:
30507/30507
“Hah!” Victor slapped his hands together in celebration, the crack of his thick palms echoing in the chamber. His Energy pool had jumped by more than five thousand, and, if he understood what he was reading, he was reasonably sure he could now use his entire pool of Energy to fuel a particular affinity. For instance, if he wanted to, he could burn all his Energy for Berserk. It would make managing his Energy during combat a hundred times easier.
A deep, rough voice rumbled behind him, “I felt that five miles away. I am pleased, apprentice. If they thought you a monster before, wait until they feel the pressure of an epic-tier Core behind your aura.”
Victor grinned fiercely, his white teeth shining in the dim chamber as he turned to regard Dar. “They?”
“Your foolish enemies. Come. You’ve been at this for hours and deserve to celebrate; we’ll join your friends for dinner.”