Concerning the contest, Gusti was better than his word. He thoroughly explained the Blessed One’s Race the day after their arrival. “Approximately once every one-thousand standard solar cycles, the Ip’pul orchard on the top of the palace’s grounds will bloom fifty mature fruits.
Sen nodded. ~That’s about two-thousand-five-hundred Earth years, brother.~
~Thanks, Sen! I’m still getting all these new time measurements straight in my head.~
Gusti continued, apparently oblivious to their silent Bond-speak, “One standard solar cycle before they bloom, a notice is sent out to prepare for the event. The day the fruits ripen, the gates of the palace will open, and the race begins. The race course takes the participants through multiple pocket dimensions with varying environments and is an individual contest against an avatar of the Blessed One. The avatar only travels at eighty percent of the speed the Blessed One could travel at the same Cultivation level as the contestant.
“If more than fifty contestants are present at the gates, there will be a qualifying one-hundred-kilometer race between them. The first fifty across the finish line are immediately taken to the race against the Blessed One’s avatar. The rest...” Gusti smiled in a conspiratorial manner. “Better luck next time, slow poke!” He’d slapped his knee and guffawed at his own joke.
Gusti’s explanation did raise some questions inside Josh’s logical mind. The orange ape had answered Josh’s questions frankly, speaking with the slow patience he had become accustomed to using with the Cultivator who had somehow achieved an Attunement with no foundational knowledge.
Yes, there are more than fifty contestants. The Clan has forty-seven, and over one-hundred and fifty more have arrived from other groups in the last six months.
No, there are no rules for the qualifying race other than to start at the signal and to cross the finish line.
Yes, the Blessed One does have constructs in place during the race which prevents most deaths, but certainly not all.
No, there are no such constructs for the qualifier... it will be perilous.
Yes, you and Sen better plan on a fight to cross the finish line in the qualifier.
No, other contestants will not be in your appointed pocket dimension with you
and the Blessed One’s avatar during the race proper. It’s simply you and him.
Usually, the avatar will take the time to impart wisdom to improve your Spherical foundation if you are wise enough to listen to it.
Yes, environmental hazards exist and there are always combat opportunities during the race with the Blessed One.
Gusti also introduced them to the Clan’s racers. The group gathered daily in an arena on the west side of the town near the palace walls. The unofficial leader of the Clan’s forty-seven singularly-Attuned racers was a Komodo Dragon Affin named Tono. He offered Josh and Sen the warm, welcoming attitude the rest of the Clan had shown them, and soon they were blending in with the junior group.
Tono, like Jorng’a, was much less humanoid than the Beast Affins they had met on the Hegemon-4.
Josh’s mind wandered. Was the phenotypic expression of Beast heritage dependent on having more Essence in the environment? Was the timing of that Essence exposure important at conception, embryonic development, or overa—
Give the science a rest, brain. I have other things to focus on now. Josh silenced his overly inquisitive scientific affinity.
After their other responsibilities were met, Josh and Sen had time for four full days—after chores for Gusti—and three afternoons per week to train at the arena.
And train they did. All the Clan’s contestants were skilled combatants with their primary choice of weapon, along with a smattering of standard weapons they used to defend the clan should there be an attack. Spears and polearms were regularly used on the Clan walls along with daggers for close combat and bows and crossbows for ranged fighting.
None were a match for Sen. When he came to the training grounds, he was quickly surrounded by those with questions and those looking to even the score from their previous losses. Per his nature, Sen was willing to share all he knew with them, though Josh could tell through the Karmic Bond that he held back whenever he would spar and always gave his opponents a chance to improve their skills instead of simply dominating them.
Josh, on the other hand, learned a lot. He used only the sword for sparring unless the challenger preferred to go hand-to-hand. Initially, he had several easy victories over Clan members with better weapon skills than him because of his Cultivational advantage of expressing his earth shield. After three such victories, Sen forbade Josh from using the shield while sparring with anyone but him.
To Josh’s looks of incredulous disbelief and betrayal, Sen was ready with what—even to Josh, sounded like excellent reasons.
“It is necessary, brother. You need to be put into the threats inherent in combat as well as the threats and accrual of actual injuries until it means nothing more than taking a breath or drinking a sip of water. You can’t have that while sparring with me nor while using your shields. All warriors must be blooded.
“On top of this. Your growth in mastering the sword requires that you be matched against new opponents with different weapons and tactics than me. I assure you. The next actual combatant you face will not be me, nor will your opponent's attack you with my style. It would be infinitely better for you to experience the variety offered here than when facing any such real foes in the contest for the first time.”
Sen then leaned in close to Josh and spoke through the Bond. ~Lastly, we will train our shields every evening at Gusti’s farm as I need you to help me practice with them. Besides, if you keep showing off your fancy new shield skill you’ll wind up spending half of your time teaching it to over-eager Clan members.~ He raised an eyebrow toward Josh. ~That’s not something your current level of combat skills can afford.~
Josh sighed, but acknowledged the point. ~When you’re right, you’re right.~
Sen scoffed heartily and offered a light punch to Josh’s shoulder. “I freely admit there are some things that made no sense to me as an Immortal and even less now as a mortal…The female mindset falls completely in this group. But about combat and proficiencies I am not wrong. Consider me precognitive in this regard.” Sen finished with a rare air of superiority. Which Josh decided he couldn’t tolerate.
It was Josh’s turn to laugh, and boy did he. “Precog, eh? Like when I smashed your face in the alley? All part of your plan, right?” Josh chuckled while Sen scowled. “Or that time that drone Matriarch cut your arm off? You didn’t need that arm anyway. In fact, I’m surprised you regrew it at all–”
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“Well,” Sen said loudly. “Would you look at that? Time to get back to training. I suddenly feel like it would be good for you if I increased the intensity a bit, you know—with the race coming up and all.”
Josh mock-saluted the Cultivator and winked before speaking solemnly. “I regret that I have but one life to give for your amusement.”
Following this conversation, Josh had many marvelous learning opportunities in the sparring rings—or as Josh soon learned to think of it., when his suffering began.
There was physical pain, to be sure. However, if he was honest, it was his pride and not his body that took the biggest hits. His first shieldless fight was against a Mouse Affin named Meni, who wielded two whips. She was unassuming and soft-spoken, with diminutive features and short gray hair over her body.
Foolishly, Josh found it hard to take Meni seriously. His hesitance quickly changed when she hopped so fast, he couldn’t track her. In a few brief seconds, Josh ended up flat on his back and momentarily stunned from the force of getting pummeled between the eyes with the haft of one of her whips. Coming to, Josh had one of her weapons wrapped around his arms and the other around his neck. Her small foot was on his chest. Over her shoulder, Josh could see Sen leaning over and struggling not to laugh out loud.
~Et tu, Brute?~
Guffaw. ~Grow stronger, brother! Ahahaha... grow stronger... ahahaha~
In this way, Josh lost fights. Over and over again. He was beaten by sword fighters, dagger users, club swingers, and several who used only their fists and horns. Often there were losses that would have been debilitating and crippling to non Cultivators that were shrugged off in minutes with rapid healing. Afterward, Josh was back on his feet and being crushed again.
While his interface was providing optimal attack patterns, he was unable to process its recommendations and implement them fast enough. When he attempted to follow its instructions, because of the delay in application, his performance was worse than when he simply allowed his reflexes and subconscious decision-making to act.
Ultimately, as with all skills—persistence led to improvement. Fighting was no different for Josh. After several weeks of taking an uncountable number of lumps, cuts, fractures, and concussions, Josh’s pain started paying off.
He recognized the patterns of his opponents’ actions that led to his interface’s optimal recommendations. He began to recognize patterns in the analysis that would lead to a series of other potential combinations of actions and reactions depending on the limited number of movements that could result in the wake of specific positioning. It became clear that the interface was taking his opponent's balance—which leg had the most weight on it—center of gravity, limb positioning, posture, and a number of other things into account to predict the next movements that were limited in scope by those positional factors of his opponents stance and distance. As with any complex system, some options were more valuable than others, given a particular adversary’s likes, dislikes and current physical condition. Recognition of the overlying matrix was Josh’s first step in being able to apply the recommended combat options before it was too late. His and Sen’s boon of perfected physical bodies greatly assisted in this regard. It granted Josh reaction speeds to match his accelerated thoughts as his familiarity with combat increased.
Perhaps the most beneficial and necessary changes for anyone to advance were, as usual, the psychological ones of perspective. Josh’s pride stopped stinging with every defeat after the first three days, allowing his mental outlook to alter. Mentally, he made learning from those failures the mission of his battles—not simply a negative consequence of competition, but the purpose of it. In that new mental perspective, losing was not a bad thing. Quite the opposite. His defeats were bringing him closer to his goals. Instead of focusing on thoughts like ‘how foolish do I look with a little mouse girl kicking my butt in less than eight seconds’, Josh thought about how to change the embarrassing outcomes. What went wrong? What went right? How can I improve for my next spar?
After seven days, he occasionally scored a point. After two weeks, he had his first victory. Yes, it was against Meni, who had beaten him seven times already, but Josh’s feet walked on the clouds with every step. He lost his next eleven fights but won the one after that against a sword-using Tortoise Affin. The Affin was strong but slow—the perfect opponent for Josh.
By the third week, he was winning as often as he lost, and remembering the most probable combat patterns from fighters armed with similar weapons. Often, Josh implemented his interface’s recommendations, recognizing his mistakes and trying not to make them again. He also remembered the form of his opponent’s attacks and how to take advantage of them with his own style. Occasionally, Josh was also able to catch them in mistakes. Nothing made him smile so widely as when he was able to maneuver his opponent to create openings and score hits against them.
By the fourth week, Josh was winning 90 percent of his matches. The last challenger for him that he still hadn’t managed to gain the upper hand over was the sword polearm-wielding Tono. He was fast and efficient, maintaining distance superiority with what appeared to his opponents like an impenetrable bladed wall. A wall that seemed to want nothing more than to outshine Jason Voohees, Micheal Myers, and Freddy Kruger in every teenage slasher movie Josh could remember cringing through as a kid… Adolescent sweat soaked nightmares aside, Tono’s increased speed was granted by his Force Affinity Attunement.
The rules for victory during the spars were simple: submission, incapacitation, or three instances of drawn blood. Everyone facing Tono, save for Sen, quickly found themselves sporting three locations somewhere on their body leaking blood in less than twenty seconds, ending the fight.
By the fifth week, even Tono had fallen to shieldless Josh’s faster and more accurate predictions, reactions, and seemingly limitless ability to improve.
By the sixth week, Josh was most often paired with Sen, and shielded or not—there was no chance of winning. However, Josh pleasantly noted that his skills had improved to the point that Sen no longer held back as much as he did with the others.
There was also “running training” which occurred when the Clan’s contestants had had enough sparring for the day and they were ready to wind down. Being entirely Beast Affin’s, Josh had assumed that running would come naturally to most and not be a great concern. This had turned out to be true. Meni had taken him and Sen aside and pointed out that the ‘formalized portion’ of the Clan’s ‘running training’ was largely directed at the group’s slowest and non-natural runners. This turned out to be a group consisting of several Turtle and Tortoise Affins along with a large amorphis gray blob of a Beast Affin named Setepek that Josh thought must have been a cross between a shell less snail and a slug. Josh wasn’t sure and thought it would be rude to ask.
He had worried about them winning any type of foot or ‘pseudopod’ race just due to purely physical limitations. But Meni, the training instructor for this portion of the Clan’s program had pointed out that running for an attuned Cultivator wasn’t so much about physical anatomy as it was about properly channeling Essence to increase the natural locomotion mechanisms they already head. With just a few short sessions Meni had even Setepek flying around the training rings like a slot car on a race track. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to Josh and he found himself nodding his head as he remembered Meni’s words. After all he and Sen had instinctively known and reflexively applied the truth of her words to their own running when they had been sped through the Hegemon-4’s Epsilon research forest in their desperate race to save Alysa. He remembered that they had both achieved speeds which would be impossible for humans to run. And this continued to be the case on Mwezi for the few scheduled complete Clan running sessions to make sure they could run as a group. During these times both he and Sen, due to Josh’s unique gifts at understanding the application of Essence and Aura in physical matter iterations along with the Clone’s boon of perfect physiology always finished with the fastest runners.
* * * * *
Between one of their fights, as he healed a severed hamstring and broken left arm, Josh checked his weapon status.
Weapon:
Bastard Sword of Acceleration
Skill Level:
Basic (42% → 88%)
Damage: Cultivation-Poor
Damage Type: Essence Infused
(Poor Infusion)
Quality: Essence channeling average. Activate with 100 Essence to accelerate strike for 250% damage.
Allows interface guidance for optimal usage.
100% Probability of 10,100% hand-to- hand damage.
He had gained 46 percent in his skill level with swords during his time with the Clan. Josh pursed his lips as he thought about the increase. The numeric jump did not demonstrate how much Josh believed he had truly improved over the past five and a half weeks. Even Sen agreed that as a fighter, Josh’s skills had improved by an order of magnitude.
“Yes, brother, you’re at least ten times better compared to where you had been when we arrived. You’ve grown as I was certain you would. I’m proud to stand beside you, however, don’t be overly concerned with the numbers. They are merely a loose representation of what a skill truly is... but they are the only quantification we have. So, as you say, we roll in it!”
~Roll with it! Yes, we do!~
All the melee combat over the past weeks had spurred another question in Josh’s mind. “Why are we only using old-school weapons? I mean... the Clan is no stranger to advanced technology and space travel. Heck! Gusti’s even shown us the space frigate that they will head back to the galactic center with after the race is finished.”
“I assume you mean guns? Why would we bother?”
“Because… they’re guns?” Josh replied, hands and arms spread wide as if the answer were obvious. “You know, superior firepower from a safe distance?”
Sen looked up at Josh with a perplexed expression on his face, not too different from the look Gusti gave him when he asked a remarkably uninformed question.
Scratching his head, Sen's answering tone seemed as perplexed as Josh was, “Why would we use something so low yield and inefficient when we have access to much greater power?”
“What, like swords and knives?” Josh blurted out his knee-jerk response. “Doesn’t technologically advanced weaponry allow for greater focused energy and more power?”
A knowing smile crossed Sen’s face as he took on his role of sensei.
He squatted and called Josh in for a closer conversation. “You’re talking about energy weapons– like on the Hegemon-4, for instance? Are they more powerful than you are with even your short sword? No, they aren’t. Why weren’t they more powerful?”
With the tables turned on him, Josh considered Sen’s question. “Well, because... I was able to cycle Essence through my sword...”
Keeping Josh on this train of thought, Sen followed up. “What exactly do technologically advanced weapons do to weaponize the energy they harness?”
Josh pursed his lips, furrowing his brows. Then it came to him, and he laughed to himself. “They focus Essence! But nowhere near as well as we do ourselves.”
“Yes, they focus Essence—and no, they don’t do it nearly as well as a Cultivator, particularly not in a place with low Essence-density like the galaxy we were in with the Hegemon-4.”
Point made. Josh was beginning to understand that Essence and the ability to focus it, or—in a word, Cultivation, were the real keys to power in any iteration.