novelraw Chapter 286
Chapter 286
No monsters confronted them on their descent.
They safely reached solid ground and were able to dismount Esther’s flying sword. Hector spent a few minutes straining his mental sense to figure out which direction seemed most promising. He’d continued training his sense and was at the point where he considered himself average for a Xian. That didn’t exactly give him bragging rights, but it was still an accomplishment considering his starting state.
He couldn’t get much of a direct read on the environment, but his insight caused him to feel a particular sense of annoyance when he faced a particular direction. If there was a rift, it would be in that direction. If there wasn’t, then he’d at least find some liquid miasma.
The miasma on the mental band was impacting his companions, whether they realized it or not. Esther self-soothed by humming a repetitive tune. Isabel, meanwhile, had gone to full intensity. She was on a hair trigger looking for things to kill. Of course both of the girls were pumping their auras to cultivate the cosmic energy he produced. It almost went without mention that they would take advantage of the primary perk of being in Miracle Squad.
The other Xian in the Reconquest were assigned to the Mitigation Squad, where their inexperience and lacking caution weren’t as much of a liability. They could wander around the perimeters of Strongholds to reduce the strain on the rune walls. Hector’s team went further afield on their missions. The two squads were quite different in their degree of daring.
Still no monsters. They wandered for two hours, following Hector’s vague sense of distaste until they arrived at a shallow pond, above which a bruise in space dribbled a slow rain of liquid miasma. It wasn’t a full rift. That explained the absence of monsters.
His two guards faced opposite directions as he sat down at the edge of the pond and worked his domain. The inky liquid fluoresced bright enough to give an unenhanced human a tan. Atmospheric levels of cosmic energy exceeded those present on Tian by a fair bit. This was the benefit of coming on the more dangerous missions that Hector took: the energy density could be quite rewarding.
Three hours later, the pond was gone. The bruised space recovered as his domain pried into the microscopic pores leading to the primordial and burned away the miasma built up there. He gestured to Isabel. “I’m exhausted. Let’s head back.”
They climbed onto Esther’s sword, took hold of Isabel’s spear for balance, and rose into the air. Once they emerged from the sea of dark mist, the strain Hector felt dropped drastically. Tension drained from his shoulders. Transforming liquid miasma remained a challenge, especially when done for hours at a time.
Fred, Nestor, Ajax, and Restoration welcomed them back. They were inspected by the Sage, then allowed to lay down while Fred took them back towards the Stronghold.
“What’s your report, Hector?”
“No rift, Fred. There was a leak that I fixed.”
“Then the trip out was worth it. Any monsters?”
“Nope. Just miasma.”
Fred considered that. “I suppose the stuff doesn’t need to take on a form to achieve its goal so far from any human settlement. For anyone else, going down there would be a death sentence. You just happen to have the key to the back door.”
They lapsed into silence, other than the Titan brothers, who were arguing about which of their celebrity crushes were most attractive – or, to use the slang of their kind, which woman was most metamorphic. That was like saying someone was hot. By the logic of the brothers, it could only be applied to Titans. Trying to call any other kind of human metamorphic invited their mockery.
Esther didn’t take their terminology serious. “I think both of those girls are sedimentary.”
Nestor groaned. “That’s not a thing, Esther.”
“What, you’re saying your girly is more igneous?”
“Please stop embarrassing yourself.”
Esther gasped as if mortally offended. “Are we not throwing out random geology terms?”
“I mean, the two of us aren’t,” Ajax observed.
Esther touched her two pointer fingers together and then matched her thumbs, creating a symbol of female anatomy. “The two of you are… diamonds, shall we say?”
Nestor cackled like he was demented. Ajax whistled. “You have broken my brother’s brain, Esther. No great loss, I know, but now I have to put up with this.”
“Ajax, you’re a diamond,” Nestor cackled.
“So help me, this had better not catch on. A Xian doesn’t get to invent new Titan slang.”
It took them most of a day to return to the Stronghold, by which point Hector’s domain had grown so exhausted that it could barely function. In other words, the trip was superb training. He found his bunker, grabbed a shower, and collapsed into his bunk.
His condition should have been a sign that he didn’t want to be disturbed.
“Hey, you’re the Hector guy, right?”
“I am the Hector guy,” he confirmed.
“I’m a Volithur heir. My name is Chris.”
Hector opened his eyes to take in the heavyset brown fellow before him. “Nice to meet you, Chris. I just got back from a long mission, so I’m looking to get some sleep.”
“Sure thing. I just wanted to meet the man who improved Volithur’s insight. Maybe get some pointers on how to go about doing that myself.”
For a moment, Hector considered sending the man away with some random advice on contemplation practices. He sighed and sat up. “Chris? Insights don’t work like that. I know what we all got from Volithur seems like it should be a great one, but it’s actually quite simple as far as insights go. There is hardly any complexity to it. I can see you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t have believed that kind of claim either.
“Here’s the thing, though. Every insight feels like it is deep and complicated when compared to normal reality. Chaotic emergence might be incredibly useful, but it isn’t a big insight. The subject is small and the boundary is clear. It only does a single thing.
“So when you think about improving it… improving how? You need to develop an intuition for another insight that shares a conceptual border for the two to merge. The insight I gained? It has a moral component. I lived out a very specific set of values for years. Not just play-acting them. They were deeply held personal beliefs. Those need to happen organically. You can’t trick an insight into happening. You need your own mind to resonate authentically with something in ultimate reality to earn your glimpse.”
He’d already had this same conversation multiple times with other Volithur heirs. Of all those he’d met so far, only Matthias hadn’t gone there. They all assumed there was some quick hack, that Hector could give them a couple of tips and they’d suddenly be his equal. The truth was, they were all lacking the convictions necessary to follow him. If they could see through Volithur’s eyes and then decide that the best path for their own lives was to avoid trouble instead of acting out at the injustices of the world… they weren’t on the same path.
Chris harrumphed loudly. “Well, sorry for asking. I didn’t think you’d be so selfish about protecting your status around here.”
Hector let them man go without correcting his assumptions. He settled down to rest, but his frustrations prevented him from reaching sleep. It bothered him a little that other people assumed achieving an insight was as simple as comprehending a lecture. Elevating an understanding into enlightenment required so much more engagement than that.
The real irritation came from the all too frequent accusation that he would withhold secrets at the expense of the Reconquest – and thus the cause of humanity in general. If possible, Hector would inject his insight on intentions into every Xian he met. Anything to slow the inevitable. Yet the other heirs of Volithur were convinced Hector was hoarding a secret so that he could hold onto his position. This after he shared aperture training techniques with them that he shouldn't know in the first place.
Before long, it was a designated meal time. Hector left the bunker to grab a quick meal, then claimed a bottle of wine from the supply depot. What came next was not something he wanted to be sober for. He’d put it off long enough. His current exhaustion might make it easier to get in the right frame of mind. With deliberate gulps, he put down the entire bottle, doing his best to keep his mind clear. The meditative silence and the slight buzz shifted him towards an altered state of consciousness, almost turning his experience dreamy.
That was good. He’d benefit from some disassociation.
Before he could think twice, Hector pumped his body and domain full of energy and then clamped his domain close to his body, letting his aura deflate. Then he began to force energy into his collapsed aura as fast and as aggressively as possible. There was a large strength disparity in favor of his domain aperture, so the strain on his aura was immense.
Hector kept pushing, ignoring the rising panic that was pushing through the alcohol haze. It had been six months since he last tried this. Long enough that the trauma had faded a bit. Not near long enough to forget. He continued with his effort, using the nervousness he felt fuel his frantic straining. In the moment, the analogy that came to his mind was mashing his own eyeball with his thumb until it popped. Something he certainly possessed the strength to do, but which went against every instinct he had.
When his aura was fully engorged, Hector held the position in defiance of all reason until the sensation surpassed pain completely and his aura underwent an involuntary spasm. Hector screamed and dropped to the ground. Feet pounded as bodies rushed towards him. His eyes were so full of tears that he couldn’t see any details. All he really knew was that he’d completed the Sandwich Technique and his abused aura for some reason failed, against all expectations, to relax. As the involuntary spasms continued, the agony continued to grow worse and he couldn’t even stop the damage from accumulating.
It took an eternity for his aura to release. According to Restoration, that translated to five minutes for those not being tortured by their own aura. After that, it took two weeks for Hector to return to a normal frame of mind. He spent much of that period catatonic, staring into the distance while hyperventilating and occasionally crying.
Not his manliest moment. Nor something he could ever willingly endure again. The trauma had been so significant that Hector didn’t think he’d have survived the shock if he didn’t have a superhuman body. Soul stress didn’t respond to analgesics, so there was no relief. Not even going unconscious with sedatives could ease the agony.
When the worst had run its course, Hector was sent back to Union Central to recover. Esther and Isabel escorted him back through Transit’s portal. He managed to walk under his own power, if only barely. Then endured a nauseating taxi ride to get him to his own bed.
Command was not thrilled with him being out of commission for an extended duration, but the fact that Mitigation Squad handled everything close to the Strongholds meant that being deprived of his services for a short period was not a problem. They’d expressed their disappointment through an understated admonishment to avoid this type of situation in the future.
Laying alone in his bed, Hector made a gesture.
Survey Results
Type: Xian
Level: 7
Body: 6.9
Mind: 7.0
Aura: 6.4
Domain: 6.8
Energy Reserves: 61%
The improvement to his aura statistic was more significant than he expected. It rose from six point one to six point four – an increase of three tenths of a level. When he could finally use his aura again, no doubt the thirty percent improvement would be noticeable. It still wasn’t anywhere near enough, though. Hector knew without a doubt that he could never bring himself to use the Sandwich Technique again. Which meant this was the last jump he would ever see from that method.