Savage Awakening 574. One More Thing (V)

These days, he often didn’t get a System message explaining the backgrounds and uses of certain treasures. The steels he’d gotten back in the Ruins were a good example. Steels were pretty self-explanatory, he supposed, but he got the feeling it had to do with the rarity of the item as well. Origin-grade items were quite rare, and he sometimes got the sense these messages were hand-annotated—someone had to put them into the System for them to exist. Meaning the rarer items were, the less likely they were to get bespoke descriptions.

In any case. He read over the message again, fascinated.

“I picked up this gourd while traversing beyond Dragonspire,” said Noughtfire. “I discovered a series of seeds within an ancient inheritance—an inheritance first established by the Archon Cowart, as the description says. It was given to rare prodigies of his clan. Prodigies who had the potential to fight those of Empyrean caliber.”

“Archon?” He’d seen the term floating around a bit, but he’d never gotten a definition.

“An extremely strong kind of Overgod,” Noughtfire clarified.

Zane nodded. “It adds the same amount of suppression resistance as my 10 Million Year Bone does.”

“You’ll need all the resistance you can get, especially as you fight into the T2 range and above… and even with that extra resistance, there’s no getting around it. If you’re fighting up power levels, you’ll need to have more shards than your opponent just to stand a chance. This resistance simply means you won’t need quite as large a differential. Resistance can never put you on par with an Empyrean with the same shards. It’ll only give you much more of a fighting chance—though that may be all you’d need.”

“I understand.” Zane was thinking about his King Astrolith fight now—how he’d had a 4-Shard advantage over the monster, and that still hadn’t been enough to fight on even grounds with it. If this would help even the playing field, he was glad to take it.

He pocketed the gourd, making a mental note to drink its contents before he broke through.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t need to thank me for such a thing,” said Noughtfire, a bit amused.

They chatted for a little while longer—just catching up. He learned Noughtfire had discovered tea not long after he’d left the Pure Yang. He’d always been a pure water drinker, but he’d had a change of heart after Zane’s time there. He’d become quite the connoisseur since. He grew his own tea plants in the garden outside, which could be glimpsed through the little window. Zane was pretty happy for the guy.

“I was meaning to ask about that, actually,” he said. “You grew that gourd yourself, right?”

“That’s right.”

Zane could swear he saw something that looked like it poking out of that garden the last time he’d visited. Maybe he should pay a little more attention to some of the other plants lying around in there.

There was a plant with crystal-petaled leaves, which Noughtfire said were meant to help with the condensing of a slab of Destruction.

“Condensing a plate of Destruction is quite simple,” said Noughtfire. “It takes little more effort than collecting all the shards. Condensing a slab… that takes precision, effort, and resources. Much like any other breakthrough. I expect you’ll find that out yourself one day, perhaps in just a few decades, depending on how the war effort goes.”

“Just how many shards make a slab, by the way?” Zane had never bothered asking that before either, but he was kind of curious. That kind of power scaling was quickly coming into relevance for him. “If you don’t mind answering.”

“Ask away. I’m hardly one for hiding knowledge, disciple. A slab of Destruction is 256 shards precisely.”

“And you have 900 shards in total.”

“Give or take.”

“…How exactly does that break down?”

“A pillar, which is 512 shards. And a series of bars—128 shards. It has been a long, slow process condensing those bars into a slab. At some point, I’ll attempt to condense those slabs into another pillar.”

Noughtfire had a wry look. “Don’t suppose I’ve given up on my path, disciple. There is always room for improvement. This next war will grant you massive opportunities, certainly. It may also offer certain chances for those like myself to reach the next stratum of power… I expect it will massively accelerate the pace of things. Just as the previous war did.”

“That’s good to know.” These Destruction denominations all felt a little abstract at the moment—pretty distant from his level of power. But he supposed it wouldn’t be long before he was condensing his own bars. Maybe a slab, even…

Noughtfire had more than just the gourd going on in his garden. A flower constantly dropping dewdrops, shrouded in a mist thick with Law. One was a sunflower whose petals were packed tight with energy, energy that only grew by the second, drawing essence straight out of the air.

They were all surrounded by little rune circles. Zane noticed Laws of Spacetime infused deep within them—Laws he was much more familiar with, now that he’d gone through the Pure Yang. Noughtfire noticed what he was looking at.

“A minor trick of time,” the old guy explained. “Each of these plants takes tens of thousands of years to mature. So I’ve taken the liberty of accelerating the process. Several of those runes are inspired by traps made by our friend Hreinn, incidentally.”

Zane blinked. “…You can make hyperbolic time chambers?”

“It’s not possible for beings with souls, convenient as that’d be,” said Noughtfire. “At least not on that scale, and not without obscene expenditures of essence. You’d need access to the Galaxy cores themselves, I’d imagine.”

He felt just a tad disappointed to hear that, though it did make sense—if it were possible, Noughtfire would’ve pulled it out by now.

If he had 10,000x accelerated time to make use of in some chamber… he could imagine how strong he’d be by the time he faced Malzareth.

Then again, it did sound like pretty mind-numbing training. He’d much rather spend his time lifting with the Barbarian Sage.

Speaking of which, he had quite a lot to get to. “I should get going,” he said, a tad apologetically. The sun marked the time around late afternoon, to his surprise. Time just flew here.

“The next time I see you, then,” said Noughtfire, “will be at a war council, perhaps. Just before the End truly begins… you’ll likely see a few of my other disciples there as well. You’ve met most of them by now. Though there is one in deep seclusion who I don’t believe you’ve seen face-to-face.”

“Gotcha,” said Zane, nodding. “…Guess I’ll see you then.”

He took in the study planet’s cloudy surface, dappled with afternoon light. He’d known Noughtfire for decades by now. It still somehow felt like it hadn’t been that long ago when he’d first ascended these steps.

“Yes.” Noughtfire directed his gaze toward the setting sun. “Sixty-five years have elapsed since the Beginning of the End,” he said. “Let us say it takes you twenty to master your next Concept. Another few years to finalize your breakthrough, achieve True God, and make your own Reality Distortion Field. That should leave you a sliver of time to prepare before the End arrives.”

“I’ll make the most of it,” Zane assured him.

“I have no doubt about that.”

It was still slowly sinking in that this was the last training cycle he’d do with Noughtfire. At least until the end of the war… it’d be a very long time before he came back to Astra, if at all.

“…Time sure goes by fast.”

“Tell me about it,” said Noughtfire, a quirk at his lips.

With that, Zane gave the old fellow a wave and set off for the World Tree.

***

Whenever Zane came back to the World Tree to visit Reina, it was pretty rare he knew the exact day he’d arrive. With how busy she was, he always seemed to catch her in the middle of something.

This time when he teleported in, he found the main hub bustling. Carts upon carts, laden with barrels full of healing elixirs, essence elixirs, and all manner of bubbling elixirs, were moving in and out of dozens of portals all at once—all elixirs too high-grade to be transported in most Interspatial Rings. The industrial war machine Reina had spun up seemed hard at work. Things were even busier than the last time he visited just fifteen years ago.

Two polite, if rather stunned-looking, guards directed him toward a familiar bough of the World Tree—one of its highest. His and Reina’s estate. Another short teleport and a journey up a winding trunk-hugging staircase, and he was there.

He found her training in the front yard.

She was in athletic wear, looking like she’d just gotten back from a run, with her hair tied back in a ponytail. Her expression was scrunched up in concentration as she dodged a blast of stone.

The first thing he noticed was that her physique glowed slightly in the Astral Plane—a sign of the Creation shards she’d taken in. When she moved, a Wind-related Concept billowed around her, giving her a tailwind that sped her up quite a bit.

She let out a cry and thrust out her staff. The emerald gemstone at its tip began glowing bright, and there Zane saw a shining of Creation Law—just about three shards’ worth.

A beam of light raced out and struck a curly-haired young elf man in silver armor—a peak True God. With Great Sage Mind, Zane felt that Creation settling in the guy’s tendons, energizing them. The elf guy stomped, exploding through the air. Then he stabbed fiercely.

The moment his spear struck the training golem they were fighting, bright-green lines shattered down the length of it, some kind of internal structural attack. It crumbled a moment later.

Reina wiped some sweat away, let out a breath, and grinned. “Nicely done!”

“I’m honored, Mistress,” said the elf guy. He looked a little flustered, like he felt honored just to receive her compliment. “Shall we go again, or…?”

“Another two attempts will do for today’s session, I think,” she said brightly. “Now, if you’ll please reset the golems, we’ll…”

She trailed off. At this point, she noticed Zane standing there, right by the gate. She gasped.

Before he knew it, she was all over him—she buried herself in his chest, beaming up at him. “I thought you wouldn’t be back until next week!”

“Shard Season came a little early this year,” he said. He couldn’t help but grin too. “Who’s this, by the way?”

She blinked. She seemed to have momentarily forgotten the guy still standing there. “Oh! That’s Calion. He’s the youngest captain in my elite archer units, the Silver Winds. Calion, this is my… Zane.”

“Hey there.” Zane gave the fellow a wave.

“I’ve heard all about you, sir,” said Calion earnestly. “It’s an honor.”

“Calion here’s volunteered to be my guinea pig as I practice my buff stack,” she told him.

“Nice.”

Zane generally had a negative impression of young elf guys around Reina, largely because most of them he’d met, like that Val Arandor guy, had rather nefarious intentions. But going by the impression his soul gave off, this Calion felt quite decent. He mostly felt in awe of her, as if he put her on a pedestal, which did make sense given her station. That awe extended to Zane himself by the looks of it.

Reina thanked the guy. “That’ll be enough for today,” she told him. She nodded to Zane. “He’ll take it from here.”

Calion bowed, a bit bewildered—“Yes, Mistress!”

He quickly left Zane and Reina to their business. The gates swung shut behind him.

“There’s so much to tell you about,” she said. Then she got a mischievous look in her eyes. “…First things first, though…”

She led him through the yard, up the steps, to somewhere a little more private.

There was an aspect of her training that had been neglected far too long, she informed him, due to the lack of a suitable training partner. This weekend, she was determined to make up for lost time. He was happy to accompany her.