Book 2: Chapter 10: Den Preparations

  When the squad returned back to “Jraughan Toune”, as the painted sign out-front the settlement so eloquently displayed, the younger kobolds cheered. The elders who came to watch their approach only gave curt nods when they crossed the shoddy wooden gates into the “Toune”.

  The guards looked at them like reinforcements… or like shields. Alex didn’t much like that feeling, as if the Kobolds saw them not as friends, but still as resources.

  They all unpacked quickly. There was no time for any celebration or fanfare. They had purpose, a goal, and an ever present glaring timer counting down to push them along. If there was anything that kept reminding Alex and the others to keep moving and keep getting stronger, it was that fucking quest timer.

  [Time Remaining; 693 Days, 10 Hours, 58 Minutes…]

  The countdown until their heavenly judgment. When The System will determine if each of them made themselves stand out enough to not be wiped out of existence. That is, if they are not able to find a way back to their own world before that. Which, so far, was neither likely or unlikely. They just didn’t have enough of a grasp on magic yet to know for sure.

  But the worrying and hand ringing wouldn’t help them right now. Instead, they had to focus on the next goal, the Dark Den.

  Alex set the training schedule before the sun had fully risen the next day. By dawn’s first hour, the clearing behind the lizardfolk huts echoed with the sounds of steel and sweat. Aura of blood, angry, depression and spite permeated the entire settlement during the human’s training sessions.

  “Again!” Alex barked.

  Cole grunted and adjusted his grip. His war hammer slammed down into the dirt with a solid thud!, narrowly missing the center of a weighted log. Pieces of bark and wood flew in every direction, the log itself cracked, if just barely.

  “You’re trying to hit the air around the target, or…?” Alex asked dryly.

  “Just warming up,” Cole muttered, and swung again.

  To his left, he could see Allie was working on mastering her dagger patterns. Her hands moved in a blur, metal flashing with each thrust and sweep, slicing through leaves suspended on a breeze using quick, bursts of movement. The daggers weren’t glowing, they held no enchantments, but the runes that were etched along the surface of her bracers shimmered with hidden promise.

  While both Allie and Cole were healers, so they would mostly fill the roles of support, but despite this fact Alex refused to let them go into the dungeon without being able to fight and defend themselves to a decent degree of competency. The brawl at the well in Vrung’s Quarry showed they had potential, but that meant nothing against the unending horde of undead that Alex knew awaited them on the dungeon’s first floor. So they were not exempt from the martial training.

  A one handed warhammer was the weapon Cole had chosen, while Allie went for daggers. Each had their benefits and weaknesses. Cole would have a better time laying down lethal hits on the skeletal enemies, while Allie would have better defense.

  The two of them continued their weapon practice and Alex moved along down the line to his next teammate.

  Devon knelt nearby, drawing complicated geometric figures into the dirt with a curved stylus. The glyphcrafting tool wasn’t as good as the one Alex had gotten from the Dungeon Shop, but it was certainly better than the basic standard stylus he had been using earlier.

  His breath was steady as he worked, slow. Each symbol floated faintly above the surface, alive with earth-aspected energy.

  “Form’s good,” Alex told him, crouching beside him. “But it’s still too brittle. Your glyph sequence won’t last in combat if they collapse under any hint of strain.”

  Devon adjusted the flow with a grimace. “This is harder without preconstructed glyph plans.”

  “Welcome to manual glyphwork,” he said, clapping him once on the back. “Suffer now, flex later.”

  Nearby, Peter and Zach worked on basic two-man drills with one defending, one attacking. Zach favored direct charges, Peter countered with feints and subtle light bursts. Neither looked comfortable, which was the point. They needed to build the muscle memory of moving and attacking with their weapons. The angle needed to deflect an attack while on defense.

  Garret, as usual, was the loudest.

  “Do I have to hit something?” he whined. “What if I just… inspired everyone? With like, morale? Or food?”

  “You’re hitting the dummy,” Alex said without looking up, “or I’m hitting you.”

  Garret groaned, lifted his longsword, and began thwacking and hacking at the straw target like it had personally offended him. Alex was having him learn the basic sword and board set-up. A longsword with a kite shield. He had the strength to keep offensive pressure with the weapon, and to tank attacks if he could learn to utilize the shield correctly.

  Henry, of course, said nothing. He was cultivating in silence near the edge of the clearing, the large halberd weapon he had chosen for himself sat on his crossed legs. His body was surrounded by a blue-gold mist of water-aspected essence, clutched in his hand was the essence fragment Alex had given him. Just like outside Celeste’s shop, his breath was measured and slow, like waves folding in on themselves as the lapped rhythmically along the shoreline. The small garden he'd planted a few days ago now had fresh shoots pushing up through the soil and they surrounded him like fairyring.

  Within a week or so, Alex was sure that Henry would have a little garden growing properly. What exactly he was nurturing in that dirt, Alex didn’t know, but he guessed it would be rather useful to them at some point.

  Even Kate was training.

  Not with anyone, of course. But off in the distance, she ran solo sword drills and as always she was silent, precise, and merciless. Her choice of blade was a more slender straight sword. Not quite a rapier, not quite a longsword. As he practiced, the blade moved like falling light. No wasted motion, no hesitation. A dance made of spite, anger, and discipline.

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  Given that her element was fire, just as Alex’s had been, he knew how the Heavenly System was fucking with her emotions. Kate must have been getting jolts of irrational rage and wrath just as he had been getting. She seemed to handle it rather well though, keeping all that anger simmering just below the surface, fuel for her ever growing fury.

  For awhile, Alex thought she might be a good candidate to have learn the [Demon Asura Style] just like him. But he didn’t have the tome to let her learn it the way he did. And it was a style that required much more understanding of one’s body and aether connection than normal. Something Alex was well suited to given his [Aether Attuned Body] ability.

  In the end he decided not to attempt teaching her the style. They didn’t need any raging demon Kate’s running around the world anyway.

  As their training continued, Alex watched them all. Walked among them. Along the way he would shout advice, corrected form, adjusted breathing rhythms, and intervened when rune flows twisted incorrectly, the shape off.

  His role became big brother, drill sergeant, and occasionally, verbal punching bag. And somehow, it worked. The squad listened. They improved. Not fast, this wasn’t some instant cultivation miracle, but they started to sharpen.

  The Vital Essence Fragments helped. One each, still glowing faintly with stored potential ready to be absorbed, The moment cultivation began in earnest, that glow transferred into the squad. Into their bones. Their cores. Their hunger for power and progress

  Alex felt it. They burned with the desire to continue on the journey toward power. Some stumbled. Others surged ahead. But all of them moved forward.

  Except for one.

  Tom-Tom stood on a flat stone at the edge of the training field, chest puffed out, arms crossed behind his back straight like a human soldier in basic training in the army. He wore a cooking pot on his head, and stood inside a leather backpack that he had cut arm and leg holes into. He carried a frying pan like it was a sword.

  Alex had to stop himself from laughing just looking at the little lizard.

  “I, too, will train,” he declared. “You will teach. I will become serious fighter now.”

  Alex turned down at him, arms folded. “You can’t even reach your own back.”

  Tom-Tom huffed. “These arms are for throwing bombs, and stabbing sword not for wiping my scales.”

  “You don’t even have a weapon.”

  Tom-Tom held up a frying pan. “I have this. And passion.”

  Alex sighed.

  Tom-Tom dropped into a wide, awkward stance. “Strike me and I will—”

  Alex flicked a pebble at him, hitting Tom-Tom in the snout. The kobold yelped, dropped his pan, and rolled off the stone he had been standing on.

  “That was a warning shot,” Alex muttered. “You’re not ready.”

  “I will be ready tomorrow!”

  “I doubt it.”

  Tom-Tom popped back up, pan in hand. “This was test of humility. I have passed.” He stood proudly, like he had somehow won something.

  He rubbed at his temples. “Just… go help Henry with the plants. You’re chaotic enough to scare off pests at the very least.

  Meanwhile, most of the squad had found a rhythm.

  Sweat slicked their forearms. Dust kicked into and filled most of their boots. All around the field spells flickered, fizzled, and flared. Peter cursed at an augmentor-spell that fizzled mid-cast, sending out sparks that caused Cole to accidentally shatter a log instead of just splitting it, and sending large splintered fragments flying off towards Allie. Tom-Tom had somehow lit his tail on fire and blamed the tree. Zach was still trying get his casting speed down on his weird ranged dark bolt spell. Eric, Lance and Peter were doing formations drills.

  Alex was about to move on to correct Garret’s wildly off-center strikes when he felt someone watching him. Not just watching. Studying.

  He turned.

  Holly leaned against a tree at the edge of the training ring, head tilted slightly to one side as she looked at him. Her long black hair was pinned back, a few loose strands falling across her temples and around her ears in sweeping loops. She wasn’t sweating, wasn’t practicing at all, she was just observing.

  “You’re not training,” he said, approaching her.

  “Not physically,” her tone was carefree. “I’m watching them. Like you. Looking for patterns, gaps, who breathes heavily before they strike. Who doesn’t reset their stance after dodging.”

  Alex raised a brow. “So you have some melee combat experience huh? Kickboxing? Martial Arts?”

  She smiled. “Kendo. I was regional Champion in my area.”

  Alex whistled. “Damn, that explains quite a bit. People don’t know what to look for, but you do.”

  “What did you compete in then?” She raised a brow.

  “Mixed martial arts. Mostly Jiu-jitsu, but also Mauy Thai and Judo.”

  “Hmm, well you should use it more. You don’t seem to have been that good at it.” She gave him a wink and a smile.

  He laughed, quick and short. “Thanks. I was starting to worry I didn’t have a personal critic.”

  “Oh no,” she said, stepping forward. “You definitely do.”

  There was a pause then, not awkward, just... charged. The kind of silence that stretched between two people who hadn’t quite figured out what they were or what the hell to do with what was bubbling under the surface.

  Alex shifted his weight. “You know, you could join the drills.”

  “I could,” she said, and walked past him, close enough her shoulder nearly brushed his. “But then I’d miss the view.”

  He smirked.

  She looked back over her shoulder, half-smile on her lips. “Besides, you’ve got a lot to carry. No need to add bruising your pride to the list.”

  Alex opened his mouth, but she was already striding across the field, pulling her sword from its scabbard on her belt and heading toward Allie. He watched her go. He didn’t say anything else, just smiled quietly.

  “She’s confident. Think its earned?” Obby commented in his head. Thankfully he didn’t bring out the horror show that was his hologram body.

  I don’t know, but I hope it is. They’ll need someone who knows what their doing. Garret is capable but isn’t serious enough. Kate is strong, but possibly unpredictable. Zach is deadly, but he isn’t quite there just yet. Devon needs time to practice. Lance, Eric and Peter haven’t figured themselves out yet. Everyone is just… unpolished.

  “Thank goodness they have you then. And me.”

  Alex chuckled a bit to himself as he thought about the hell they still needed to go through. He cracked his neck and got back to work.

  ***

  By the time night fell, the clearing had once more gone quiet. The only sound that could be heard was the crackle of fire, the occasional cough or groan of sore pain, and the hum of spent aether settling in worn bodies. After a while day of physical training, he was still making them cultivate every extra minute they could squeeze in. They all had their mage Core attunement rising, and rapidly now that they could use the fragments and try setting up proper cultivation areas for them.

  Cole and Henry had the pond and Henry’s garden. Kate and Garret sat by the bonfire. Allie had a huge spike during sunset, and dusk. Both times seemed to be the sweet spot for her light-dark dual attunement. Zach found himself a dark spot in the kobolds tunnels. Eric and Holly had no problems finding a breeze and setting up.

  They held their glowing fragments in their hands, eyes closed, cycling aether energy furiously, like their life depended on it, because it did. The mentally deranged Heavenly System still dangled Domacles sword over their heads in the form of the fucking quest countdown timer.

  Alex couldn’t stop himself looking at it every couple of hours. He felt like a paranoid lunatic checking if their front door was locked every ten minutes ‘just in case’. Buts still, it was a looming thought that never left the corner of his consciousness.

  [Time Remaining; 692 Days, 22 Hours, 11 Minutes…]

  A swipe of his hand, and he dismissed the system screen.

  Alex sat at the edge of the campfire, Obby’s stone resting beside him. The [Three-Fold Condensing Spiral] hummed behind his head, sucking in aether passively as Alex compressed, compacted and channel the energy through his tissues. The excess energy went into the gem in his bracer. He was glad to have gotten that back, and to finally have the capability to fill the Adept Tier gem with liquid quality Adept Tier aether.

  So just like everyone else, he sat, and he cultivated. He didn’t say much. Just watched. They were getting there. Each one in their own way. None of them were perfect, and none of them were ready. But they were moving forward.

  And in Aetherios, that was enough to survive.

  For now.