Warrior of Light
mrsquishr
Chapter 2: Pillars of the Future
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Being awoken far too early by his frantic mother, Lucien blearily opened his eyes and gazed up at her. She seemed concerned and was checking him over.
Shifting his gaze to the side of his crib he saw his blanket draped over the railing, still damp with sweat and displaying a conspicuous blood stain in the middle.
‘Shit, I guess that chest wound bled more than I thought it would.’
He looked back up at his mother as her movements slowed, evidently finding no trace of injury on him. She wouldn’t, one of the most basic uses of the Light was to heal, and even the miniscule amount he had running through him at this stage would close up the wound from the needle in a couple of minutes.
That didn’t take care of the sweat soaked blanket though, ‘maybe she thought I was running a fever?’ She placed the back of her hand against his forehead, confirming this theory though, again she wouldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. If anything, he ran colder than normal, passively taking in some of the ambient heat to fuel himself.
Despite finding no obvious issues, Lucien had still managed to earn himself a trip to an Urgent Care with his stunt, his parents obviously concerned about his health. Once again nothing was found and so, with a seemingly perfectly healthy baby boy, Lucien and his parents returned home to little fanfare.
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Over the next few months Lucien continued to monitor his cycle, correcting any flaws that developed with it, and planning the next steps in his growth. He couldn’t move too fast, he was still only a few months old, but he wanted to ensure his body was properly prepared for future channeling.
He had a unique opportunity in being able to temper his body with Light at such a young age, body still malleable enough to adjust without too much issue. If he could lay a solid foundation for future stages, then he would rapidly be able to regain his lost strength. Hopefully this time he wouldn’t have to resort to forcibly advancing through stages as, with the benefit of hindsight, he could see that while he gained boosts in raw power output, his techniques and skills had lagged dangerously far behind.
After establishing his first cycle, Lucien’s secondary goal was to ensure that his mind palace was still intact, and that he still had access to some of the techniques that he had discovered in the ruins of his old world.
While unable to use any of them when he had discovered them, Lucien had made sure to study them in great depth to try and gleam some manner of enlightenment towards their underlying principles. Now, still at the beginning of his journey, he had the chance to browse through these powerful skills and create the foundation of his future advancement.
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Because of his decision to continue channeling the Light, many of the techniques were not immediately useful to him, as they focused on other sources of power. A few of the remaining skills showed great promise, and Lucien thought that he could borrow some of the principles of the others to create something tailor made for him.
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In the end, Lucien decided to utilize one concept as the driving force behind his progression. Previously he had focused on raw overwhelming power output, and it had taken him far. It was also something that was far too useful to totally abandon. This time, he held one value above everything else.
Survivability.
The Light provided unending methods of offence from scorching beams, to throwing glowing spears, but where it really excelled was in the defensive side. Having already used the healing aspects of Light to mend his chest wound its potency would only grow with time, and his understanding of the body.
Beyond the healing, Lucien intended to use the more mutagenic properties of Light to mold his body into a fortress that could withstand anything. This would allow him to channel huge amounts of Light, as he had in the past, without the danger of overheating that had shadowed his every move.
By the time The End had grown near, in his old body, his passive Light generation was enough to cause him great pain as it tore his body apart; and uncontrollably spewed power from his eyes, such that they didn’t really exist in the physical sense. He sought to avoid that fate on this go-around, and so would have to experiment with his physical development.
One thing that was vital for him to reacquire as soon as possible were his wings as they acted as giant filters to absorb energy and would help to vent any excess in case of an emergency. He would have to find some way of disguising them this time, as he did not want to draw attention to himself until he was strong enough to do something about it.
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Lucien’s first modification was to his eyes, probably because of the trauma of feeling them boil out of his skull the last time.
‘Yes, probably best to avoid pulling that one out in front of my parents.’ He chuckled to himself, while staring at his eyes in a mirror. They were brown this time, though not for long, and he wanted to move slowly during these early stages.
‘Carefully’ he murmured, gathering his willpower, and started to draw on the growing reservoir of Light that sat spinning in his heart. Until he could figure out the whole wings situation, he was stuck absorbing ambient heat through his skin, a horribly slow and inefficient method when he had to do it subtly. This would work as a stopgap until then and would allow for an emergency weapon in case he had to defend himself.
Guiding the Light into his left eye first, he watched in the mirror his pupil slowly expanded, consuming iris and most of the sclerae before contracting rapidly to slightly larger than its previous size. This was accompanied by a sharp burning in his eye, and bloody tears streamed down the side of his face. Quickly focusing on his right eye, he repeated the procedure, pushing through the sharp pain that flared up on both sides of his head.
Finally finished, he gazed upon his handywork, and tried to draw in Light. Lucien’s pupils quickly expanded to cover most of his eyes, and the lights in the room dimmed slightly. Staring into the two voids that sat in his face, he quickly guided this new flow of energy into his cycle, splicing it into the already flowing stream.
The new surge of power flooded his veins, and he could feel them burn as they tried to adapt to the new throughput. He knew it would take days, if not weeks, until the burn went away, and he had adapted to the amount of Light he could access. He would need to improve his reservoir too and bring it closer to the core that used to possess.
For the time being, he relaxed his pull on the energy, and his pupils slowly contracted to a normal size, cutting the absorption down and easing a bit of the burn. He’d be able to run the passive intake all day without garnering suspicion and could increase the rate at night to maintain a constant intake. He did have one more thing to test, his little hidden weapon.
Lucien had to admit, he was always a fan of the old comics, and Superman’s heat vision had been something that he had recreated with the Light before. This was a smaller scale version of that, and he focused his eyes on a small coin he had found while crawling around the house for exercise. Drawing a pulse of Light from his reservoir, a flash of Light linked him with the coin momentarily before it faded and revealed a perfect hole in the coin, as well as in the wall behind it.
His eyes burned from the test, and Lucien knew he couldn’t how the beam for any long durations. ‘I’ll save it for emergencies I guess.’
Glancing back towards the mirror, Lucien paused as he noticed the blood coating his face for the first time. ‘Well, fuck. Got to get washed up before someone sees me.’
He made for the bathroom as fast as his little hands and feet could take him.