Soul of the Warrior

Aeriella watched as that confounded man was dragged away from the empowered boulder she had dropped on his head. She was stunned to see that he had survived the crushing blow, and her body was momentarily frozen in place with her arm outstretched. She lowered her hand and whipped her head around to the nervous man standing behind her and to the side of her.

"What the hell was that about?!" She yelled, hands on her hips. Her armor mostly hid her figure, but if anyone looked close enough, there was no denying that she was feminine. She subconsciously stood with her hips slightly tilted as she stared at one of her subordinates. "Who are those people, and why are they interfering?"

"Umm... locals?" The man, Colonel Irio, ventured.

"Locals?!" Aeriella leaned forward, her eyes narrowing. "You're telling me that a local not only deflected my Death Beam, but that he also destroyed my Tier 6 Teleportation Array, from a distance?"

"Umm... yes?" Colonel Irio tapped his two index fingers together as sweat dripped down his brow.

"Ridiculous!" Standing with one hand still on her hip, Aeriella raised her right hand up to the ponytail sticking up out of the top of her helmet and flipped it dramatically. She turned and stalked off back towards her base. "Fix it!" She Commanded over her shoulder.

These idiots had better not delay my goal, Aeriella fumed. I deployed the entire first Division so that they would have enough manpower to get the job done quickly and efficiently, and they've apparently gotten themselves into a war! I need to get the reports to see what the hell is going on.

That man... Aeriella paused in her stride, turning her head as she thought about the obvious commander of those "locals." I wonder who he is? I could sense that he wasn't old. Even in the capital, there aren't many around my age who could block my Death Beam and be able to sprint for miles afterward. Interesting.

 

 

Reivyn felt like he was tossing and turning. He couldn't get any restful sleep at all, as his world was constantly rocking up and down. It was incredibly annoying. Not only that, but it felt like there was a hard stone digging into his ribs. He couldn't adjust himself at all. Maybe he was tangled up in his covers, because every time he tried to shift, he was forced back into the uncomfortable position by something.

Reivyn's eyes opened and his mind couldn't make sense of what he was seeing. He felt like he was on an ocean of sand, rocking to the waves. There were other people all around, but the world was sideways. Reivyn was only able to try and make sense of what was going on around him for a moment, though, as he was unable to keep his eyes open, and the darkness returned.

The darkness was all-consuming. He was still vaguely aware of the movements keeping him from fully descending into unconsciousness, but the world was black. Despite there being no sight, Reivyn's mind was still dizzy, and he felt like the world was constantly tilting to one side, but it never quite completed the shift.

Eventually, a constellation of stars appeared in the distance. Reivyn felt a connection to the bright lights, and he wanted to connect to them. At first, they seemed to be impossibly far away, but they drew closer and closer. They weren't coming straight to him, though. It was like they were slowly descending to land somewhere off on the horizon in the distance.

Reivyn wanted to get closer to the evenly spaced lights, and he struggled to pull his consciousness to the surface. He needed to gain control of... something in order to make them come closer to himself. He could feel the restraints preventing him from shifting his position tighten around him as he wiggled about to try and change the direction of his own motion.

His mind clawed its way out of the darkness for a moment. The same strange scene of a sideways world with men and some women running down it came into view.

"Familiar..." Reivyn whispered.

"... was that..." A voice came from beside the annoying lump in his ribs.

"Falling stars... over there... familiar..."

Reivyn struggled harder and harder until he felt a shift in the direction the sideways world was moving. They moved to start moving in a closer direction to the familiar lights in the distance. Reivyn didn't know why relief flooded him, but it allowed his mind to once more sink down into the darkness.

In the bouncing world, the bright lights began to descend toward him again, but they were on a collision course. The string of lights continued off into the distance farther than Reivyn could perceive, but more came into his perception as they got closer and closer.

After what felt like an eternity, they drew abreast of the first light. Reivyn's mind extended out and connected to the light. It burst into a shower of colorful lights as his will made contact with it.

There was a change in the world of darkness. It didn't seem to be quite as dark as it had been before, yet it was still pitch black. Reivyn couldn't make sense of what the difference was, but there was a marginal change somehow. It wasn't the connection to the light itself that made the change, Reivyn's instincts told him, but it did have an effect.

He continued to bounce toward the next light, and a similar scene happened. His will reached out and connected to the light, and it burst into a little supernova of power. The darkness once more seemed to shift, and now there were thousands of faint lines perceivable all around.

They made absolutely no sense to Reivyn's tired mind. They weren't stationary, and they moved about, yet most were stationary relative to each other.

The lights continued to descend, and Reivyn continued to burst them with his will. The lines grew more and more distinct until he eventually could make sense of what they were. The scene of him and many people running through a sideways world were replicated in the lines. They were only outlines in the darkness, though. There was no substance to the world, just the outlines of the people and the ground.

It grew more and more distinct as they ran. Their path deviated slightly from the line of stars, but they were still close enough that Reivyn could connect with them. As the outline world grew more and more distinct, he was able to reach out farther and farther to the lights, so he wasn't too concerned, though.

A sharp incongruous disturbance entered the ouline world. Instead of a flat plane for the ground, there appeared several distinct specks spread about on the ground. Reivyn didn't know what they were, but something was pulling at his awareness that they were a danger.

There was a swirling mass of Mana connecting the fragments together, and Reivyn reached out to connect to it with his will. He needed to do something to alleviate the danger they represented. His will made contact with the Mana, and a new awareness slammed into his mind.

Reivyn was filled with thoughts of bloodthirst and hatred. The other awareness didn't scream out in outrage at him, and the fragments strewn about the ground began to come together. The will of the other... thing tried to batter Reivyn's mind with brute force as it screamed at him, but Reivyn redoubled his efforts to grab ahold of the Mana.

He mentally slapped the will of the thing to the side and grabbed a firm grip of the Mana. He didn't really know what to do with it now, though. He hesitated with indecision as the outlines of the running people drew closer to the fragments that were beginning to come together in a larger and larger shape. Without having many options, Reivyn simply yanked back against the Mana that he had grabbed with his will.

A large ball of violent Mana extended out from the central mass of the Mana holding the fragments together. There was still a connection from the Mana Reivyn had seized connecting it to the central mass. The other awareness added panic and terror to the emotions that were slamming into Reivyn, but Reivyn didn't let up. There was resistance as the seized Mana reached a tipping point, and Reivyn bore down with his will, pulling as hard as he could until the connection snapped.

The seized Mana, no longer connected to the central mass, became free and flew toward Reivyn. The other awareness snapped out of existence from Reivyn's perception, though he knew that it still existed with the other mass. Reivyn had seized over half of the total Mana holding the fragments together, and, as a result of gaining control of the Mana, over half of the fragments disintegrated into nothingness.

The Mana that Reivyn seized crashed into his mind, and he felt a soothing sensation envelope his mind. It was like he had dunked his head in a cool pool of water after a tough training session.

Pain exploded in his awareness. He hadn't been aware of how much pain he had been in until the soothing sensation had entered his mind. His mind stopped the eternal tilting, but there was still excess Mana floating about in his mind. His body was in excruciating pain, and without knowing what he was doing, Reivyn grabbed the Mana and shifted it toward the places that were screaming the most.

The cooling, relieving sensation abated the pain he was in, and it was no longer all-consuming. The Mana rapidly depleted, though, and he wasn't able to eliminate the pain completely.

Reivyn tried to reach out and seize more Mana, but now that the fragments had fully formed together, there was a barrier preventing him from digging his will into the foreign Mana.

The outlines consisting of the world grew magnitudes more clear after absorbing the Mana. The running people finally made contact with the fragments that had formed up. The fragments hadn't been able to fully come together because of Reivyn's intervention, though, and the outlines of the people descended on it. Reivyn couldn't make sense of what happened, but the lines of the people surrounded the fragments and continuously made contact with it until the Mana disappeared, and the rest of the fragments also disintegrated into dust.

The conflict only lasted a short moment, and the running people hardly slowed down.

More and more fragments were in the way of the running people, and Reivyn continued to steal Mana away from them to soothe his own body. He was still in immense pain, but it was manageable, by the time they passed into a zone where there were no more interactions.

Reivyn had been so focused on yanking the Mana away from the danger, he had lost focus of the stars. Reivyn frantically searched with his awareness, and he eventually found the line again. It was now far off into the distance, the running people having deviated from the line from their fights with the fragments. Reivyn was about to wiggle about once more to shift and make the person carrying him aware of needing to change course.

He had eventually been able to recognize that the hard rock in his ribs was the shoulder of a man carrying him as he gained more faculties from stealing the Mana. There was no substance to the outline world around him, and some of the outlines were filled in with more detail. Reivyn could perceive the world around him in a bubble that extended about twenty feet, but everything beyond that point was still just darkness. The only exception was the stars in the distance.

Before he could shift about to get the man's attention, though, the ground exploded up in a shower of dirt and dust. About 60 to 70 forms jumped out of the ground in front of the familiar outlines and charged at them. These new outlines were roughly similar in shape to the familiar ones of the running people, but they were elongated and obviously not human.

Lines representing weapons and shields clashed as the group of running people quickly formed into an organized rectangle to ward off the attack. The man carrying Reivyn stood behind the formation, and Reivyn could perceive him directing the others.

Another explosion of dirt happened right next to Reivyn and the man holding him, and Reivyn could feel another new change. He felt his left hand wrap around something hard and smooth, and it yanked upward, blocking a sneak attack from the sudden appearance of another humanoid.

Reivyn had no control over his body, but as the frantic attacks were launched at the man holding him, his body moved on its own, blocking all of the strikes. He didn't counterattack, and he couldn't muster the will to do anything with his body on his own.

After a brief exchange where Reivyn automatically blocked seven swift strikes in less than a second, the man carrying him finally retaliated. The new assailant panicked as he was unable to get beyond Reivyn's parrying, and the man took advantage of it to press it to the breaking point. The reptilian humanoid tried to disengage with the man, but the outline of the man's sword slashed through its neck, severing its head.

The fight continued for another couple of minutes before several of the sneak attackers managed to get away and flee into the distance. Reivyn's left hand still held the hilt of his sword in a death grip, but he was unable to do anything about it.

Reivyn needed to tell the man carrying him that they had deviated from the path they had been traveling, but he was having a hard time pulling himself to the surface of the darkness once again. In desperation he grabbed ahold of his own Mana that was swirling about within himself, and using the same technique he had used with the rogue Mana, he pinched pieces off and began infusing it into his mind and other aching parts of his body.

With the relief from the pain, he was finally able to open his eyes.

"The line," Reivyn muttered, pointing toward where the beacons were buried.

That was all he was able to do though before he began dry heaving from the headache and disorienting vision. The outline of the world didn't dissipate once he opened his eyes. He had full vision, powered by his high Perception Stat, but he still had a 360-degree view of the surroundings within twenty feet.

His mind wasn't built to handle the clashing perceptions, and a splitting headache made it feel like his head was going to burst apart. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, cutting off one aspect of his perception, but the bubble outline still remained. It violently tilted once again, as a severe dizzy spell hit Reivyn.

"That way," Reivyn threw his hand up, indicating the direction of the beacons. "We're off course."

"Yes, sir," Reivyn heard the reply.

He wasn't able to focus on anything else, though, as another wave of dizziness hit him, his headache intensifying even more. Somehow, the bubble awareness included sounds, and it clashed with the words he heard from his ears. He desperately tried to dismiss his own hearing.

The sense of sounds he got from his bubble awareness was incredibly detailed and intricate. He could tell the exact position each and every sound came from, and he had perfect clarity of what the noises were. It was information overload, and Reivyn's mind once again tried to descend into darkness, but he knew that it wouldn't help. Even when he had been fully unconscious, this new bubble of awareness had been present.

He rallied his will and forced himself to stay awake. He focused his mind, and he cut his physical sensation of sound off with a mental flip. He didn't know how he did it, but he didn't care. The amount of information provided by his new awareness, though, was still exponentially more than he had ever had to parse through. The only thing he could do was hang on for the ride as he tried to adapt.

He was vaguely aware of the shifting direction toward the beacons, but Reivyn had pulled his mind into himself, trying desperately to not go mad from the overload in his brain.

The soldiers continued to run, and Reivyn had a sense of relief in the back of his mind as he noticed them get back on track, running along the line of beacons he had previously buried.

Reivyn once more entered a world of partial awareness, but this time it was due to his own sense of survival. He wasn't unconscious, but he deliberately shut out as much of the world as he could.

Slowly, slowly Reivyn allowed minute amounts of information to pierce into his direct consciousness as he adapted to the new sensations. There were no more ambushes from the snakemen, and the dust devils hadn't had time to repopulate the narrow line they had cleared out nearly a week ago.

The original plan had been for Reivyn to once more erase any signs of their passing so that any pursuers wouldn't know where to go to follow them across the flat lands. Reivyn would also destroy the beacons as they passed by, just in case they had someone who could sense them.

Luckily, in Reivyn's fugue state, he had accidentally been able to carry out one portion of their plan. He had been unable to erase their tracks, though, so the enemy would at least be able to have a rough estimate of where they were headed. At least the land where the snakemen and dust devils dwelled was hard-packed dirt. They wouldn't leave any lasting, permanent signs of their passage, and the wind would help mask what tracks they did leave.

Reivyn didn't know how far away the pursuers were, but if they had at least a couple of hours' head start, they should probably be fine. The enemy would cross into the snakemen den, and they would get tied up in fighting the dust devils and snakemen. That would give Reivyn's two platoons enough time to get away and hide.

Hours passed as Reivyn fought to maintain his sanity, and his outline world all of a sudden snapped into perfect clarity. It was like he was fully awake, but with a perfect 360-degree vision and perfect perception of everything going on around him within twenty feet. The headache disappeared as it had never been, and his mind was finally able to accept the information being fed to it.

He opened his eyes once more, but he immediately became dizzy with the clashing views. He snapped his eyes shut once more, and the dizzy spell dispersed after a moment. At least the headache didn't come back, Reivyn thought as he fought the roiling in his stomach from the dizziness.

He had only had his eyes open for a split second, but the conflicting view had been confusing. Everything in his twenty-foot bubble was perfectly clear, but the view he had seen beyond his bubble had been muted with shades of gray and black.

"Ugh, I think we're good to stop for a bit," Reivyn said with a groan. He had cotton mouth, and it was hard to get the words out. "Put me down and let's take a break."

"Yes, sir," Jekle replied. He called for Paul and Laris to halt the platoons, and then he moved about in a circle, hesitating to put Reivyn down.

"What are you doing? Just put me down," Reivyn said.

"Yes, sir. Umm, I can't see where to put you down, though. It's a new moon, and the stars aren't enough to illuminate everything. I'm afraid I'll put you down in an awkward position."

"Wait, is it nighttime?" Reivyn asked.

"Yes, sir."

Hmm, that would explain the contrasting views. It seems like my new perception isn't influenced by the light or lack thereof.

"It's fine. Just bend your knees and I'll hop off," Reivyn said.

"Ugh..." Jekle continued to hesitate. "I'm not sure that's a good idea. Your body is pretty broken right now."

"It's alright. I'm already a lot better. Just put me down."

"Yes, sir."

Jekle finally bent his knees, and Reivyn shimmied himself off of his subordinate's shoulder. His legs made contact with the ground, and upon putting his weight on them, searing pain shot up his legs and he crumpled to the ground. Jekle reached out like he was going to catch him, but Reivyn steadied himself, gritting his teeth.

He instinctively used his new trick with this Mana, running it through the painful areas, and it lessened considerably. He sighed with relief after a moment and sat up in a cross-legged position.

"Did we lose anyone?" Reivyn asked. His first question was about the status of his men.

"A couple of minor wounds from the scuffle with the snakemen and dust devils, but nothing serious," Jekle answered. "Everyone made it out of the tunnel. You were the only one we were worried we were going to lose."

"Well, as you can see, I'm fine, now," Reivyn said.

"You weren't for a long time," Laris said in a subdued voice, walking up to the pair with Paul.

"How long was I out of it?" Reivyn asked.

"Six days."

"Six days?! Are we still being pursued?"

"Not that we can tell," Jekle shook his head. "We spent nearly two days rushing to and across the flat lands. After we determined that we had gotten away, we've been moving towards the next destination according to our previous method: resting during the day and moving at night. You just happened to call out while we were moving."

"So you're saying that the fight with the snakemen was four days ago?" Reivyn asked.

"Yes, sir," Jekle confirmed.

"Huh, I thought it had only been several hours since then. I didn't think I had fallen unconscious again." Reivyn sat in silent contemplation for a moment. "Just give me a minute to check my Status and get used to some things, and then we can get going again."

"Yes, sir," the three men offered a salute before walking a short way away.

Reivyn pulled up his vitals in his Status before doing anything else.

Health: 713/6,360 (+6,670) Stamina: 12,210/12,210 (+12,620) Mana: 7,150/7,150 (+7,200)

713 Health after six days of recovery? Reivyn was flabbergasted. Just how close to death had I come? Reivyn shook his head and moved on to the Notifications blinking to get his attention.

Fatal Crushing Damage: -4,500

Helpful Hint: More than half of your bones have been crushed. You won't recover any Health Points until your bones have healed.

I had been taken down to under 4,500 Health after taking that hit from the new enemy boss. I don't know how much my body had recovered from then til getting crushed, but it couldn't have been more than a hundred points. I should have died from the shock of going below 10% Health in such a manner...

Reivyn remembered his dad, many years ago, telling him that it wasn't completely necessary to reach 0 Health to die. If someone lost so much Health in a manner that they dropped to 10% or lower extremely quickly, the shock to the system would more than likely be fatal.

Well, what's important is that I survived. Let's see what else is going on.

Achievement!

Deconstruct a Spell that is three or more Tiers above your own.

Bonus to manipulating "free" Mana.

Achievement!

Survive a blow of more than 50% of your Health that simultaneously drops you below 10% Health.

New Skill Unlocked! Regeneration (0 ->1)

Helpful Hint: Regeneration is deactivated until your bones are further healed.

New Skills Unlocked!

Tier 5:

Mana Drain (0 ->1)

Mana Healing (0 ->1)

Mana Reinforcement (0 ->1)

Tier 6.5:

Divine Sense (0 ->1)

Helpful Hint: The lack of Divine Mana greatly restricts the effectiveness of Divine Sense. Gain access to Divine Mana to upgrade the Skill to Tier 7.

Perfect Domain (0 ->1)

Helpful Hint: Perfect Domain is a perfect integration of Domain and Divine Sense. Gain access to Divine Mana to upgrade the Skill to Tier 7.

Tier 6.5?! Reivyn was taken aback. Does that mean they're Pseudo-Divine? The Helpful Hint basically says they're actually Divine Tier Skills, but I don't have access to Divine Mana, so I can't unlock their full capabilities.

And Domain? Didn't mom say that was something to be talked about once I approached Tier 4?

Well, it's not important right now. The real prize, despite being a Tier (and a half?) lower is the Mana Skills I gained. Apparently, the Mana of the dust devils is considered "free" Mana when they're not fully formed, and I drained the Mana away from it. Then, I somehow used it to heal myself and reinforce my body. That would explain the soothing sensation and my Health recovery.

Looks like I subconsciously restored my bones to the point I could recover my Health.

I wonder what this means for my future training sessions with dad?