Scarily little is known about the beings that creep beyond the veil of reality. They are creatures of concept and shapelessness, disallowing any form of biological study or proper observation. Very few have had the misfortune of meeting one of these enigmatic beings, and even fewer have escaped the encounter with their lives. Even then, their memories remained fragmented and unwhole, torn past recovery. A natural safeguard against proper understanding, experts suppose.

The Study of the Beyond, Chapter 7

**

“You almost had it that time! Just braid the energy together!” Fon cried out excitedly from the comfort of the jeep’s passenger seat.

Brock, who was seated on the grass with his legs crossed, grunted, “Yeah, I’m trying that mate.”

Immediately after the final meeting with Adam, Brock had returned to the hospital and visited Fon, who was doing well for herself and had seemed to have opened up to him somewhat. Her emotions were more vibrant, and she honestly appeared to be happy to be with them than when she’d joined them initially.

At least that’s the assessment he had made during the week since they’d left New Paris.

She was discharged the day after he’d visited, and after doing a brief sweep for her parents just in case they were in the city, they bought some excess rations from a ration station since they weren’t entitled to daily rations. It was due to being ‘outsiders’, as the vendor had so snarkily called them.

Promptly afterwards, they got in the jeep drove out of the city. It had taken a while of deliberation with the information Adam had given him on his sister’s whereabouts, but he decided to go and persue Jane. She was still family, and he needed to confirm her continued existence with his own eyes.

They’d also departed last on… bad terms, and he strongly wished to rectify it.

Initially when they’d left, Brock had felt a follower tailing them, probably that shadow messenger sent by Maxwell to gather information on them, if he was to make a guess.

A quick show of his aura and a utilisation of Oppressive Might to raze gouges the surrounding earth seemed to be enough to ward them away, at least for the time being. Unfortunately, Brock had made the oversight not to ask if petrol was purchasable, and the jeep ran empty only two days into the trip.

Brock couldn’t say he was surprised. They were chewing through the stuff like a fat kid ate chocolates.

And so, one week into the trip, it seemed that Adam’s two-week travel time estimate was looking to be a whole lot longer. The group was forced to travel on foot, and although even their jogging speed was on par with what most humans could run normally, it was still a slow process. If Brock was alone, he could have used his Agility of over 500 to speed through the place.

At his peak speed, he could almost outpace the jeep. They had tested it.

Well, he’d only be able to beat it in speed until about the 150kmph mark. Brock sported a quicker acceleration, but the jeep’s max speed was 255kmph. When it really got revved up, Brock had no hope in hell of outrunning the vehicle.

Still, he was rather impressed at the sheer speeds he could reach with his body alone. It made him wonder if, like Dexterity, he’d also need to invest in Constitution to be able to cope with his rapid rate of movement. He’d rather not tear himself to pieces just by running.

In other news, Fon had finally crested level 27 after the minor power levelling saga that had taken place during the week, mostly involving Brock chaining higher levelled beasts down with his first Technique or through Harry rendering them still with paralytic poison. Either way, they got a bit of ‘Exp’ out of it too, and Fon experienced large amounts of much-needed growth.

Her Aura Technique, as they had begun calling the level 25 Techniques one could earn, involved a complicated ability to perceive the future movement of energies a few seconds ahead in a ten-meter radius around her. At first, they had been absolutely stumped as to how it was meant to work and be used, but soon, they realised the true power she now held.

Moirai’s Perception allowed her to detect the future movement of energies, and since she had claimed to possess the prodigal ability to see all types of energies, from what she called physical energy to even the flows of Augments, it basically rendered her a seer, capable of reading the future in a limited capacity.

Techniques, Augments, the energy emanated by physical movement; she could predict the happening of it all, meaning she was intently aware of the direction of a fight at all times, which was undoubtedly priceless. Unfortunately, it expended immense amounts of energy to be in use, and she could go for about a minute before she was wrung completely dry.

Her Foresight Technique did offer a similar future seeing ability, though that only applied to what she could see, and didn’t affected the immaterial world.

Then, a thought had come to Brock’s mind.

He had soon realised that if her Technique let her see the movements of Augments, she could help him hone his own. Before, with just her eyes, she had an intricate understanding of how the strange powers worked and reacted by learning from her sight. It was probably higher than Brock’s own understanding of Augment, and he was certain he’d had them longer than anyone on the planet.

But with the added effects of her aura, not only could she understand his energies, she could also see what would happen if he did something and what kind of usages would work. Or, on the opposite side, she could see what wouldn’t work, and therefore why it wouldn’t so he could avoid it or find a solution to it.

So now, she watched on, utilising both her passive ability to see energies and her aura to predict the successful path to his goal as Brock fiddled and messed around with the uses of both of his strange powers.

Initially, he had hoped that she could assist him in breaking through, but that appeared to be a wholly internal process based on insight, and couldn’t be influenced by outward guidance unless of course, it related to the insights themselves. What she could do, however, was help him practice control and more efficient or alternate ways to utilise his Augments.

It had taken a stroke of genius from Fon, but she had suggested that he twist the energy into a braid before it left the bounds of his pathways. That way, it would ‘use the same amount of energy, but be twice as dense and volatile’, as she had said. Brock had thought it was an incredible idea, and even Harry had tried to incorporate it, but his control was severely lacking.

He’d need to practice basic control first. The boy just usually let his Augment do its own thing.

Still, Brock was struggling immensely. Both of his Augments were unruly and seemed to resist being folded over and twisted into itself. At one point, he had done so too fast, and the energy had abruptly combusted in his pathways, creating a hole in both his ethereal and physical self. That had made him unable to use his Augments for an entire day while it healed, lest he make the hole worse or create another one.

On the same side of that coin, Fon had been finding it difficult to gain access to Brock’s own Augment of Skies, despite having witnessed and understood the way the unique energy flowed. He had thought it would match up with her archery perfectly, though it was proving tougher in actuality to accomplish.

Aside from that, though, the other two goals for her had been realised to some degree. She also now had a short sword sheathed at her waist, courtesy of the contents in Ur’Kahn’s storage ring.

What wasn’t working so well for them was the concept of friendly ‘spars’ to improve their combat skills in a safe environment. Brock and Harry couldn’t spar with each other, mostly because he moved so fast that Harry could barely understand what was going on, and Fon couldn’t even spar with Harry because he was almost twice her level and literally impenetrable to her best attacks.

Currently, he was sitting at the cusp of level 50, stuck right at the peak of 49, ready to get that final push and breakthrough to the lauded milestone. Brock himself had experienced growth, mostly from the frequent clearing of the Skin Walkers dens he undertook along the way, though it was far far far slower than it had been before, since now many of the creatures within were just barely below his level.

Simply put, very few level 40+ Skin Walkers existed.

Still, he now found himself at level 41 and was excited to finally be levelling once more after his long hiatus in growth. Harry and Fon had stayed clear of the dens for obvious reasons relating to their mental sanity and had always looked extremely relieved when Brock climbed his way out bloodied and wounded, but alive. There were still a rage-inducing amount of corpses in there, but fortunately, he was never one of them.

The next one should have people alive captured within according to Adam’s map, or at least people who were recently alive last time they’d be checked on. Luckily, there was a town only a few hours walking distance away from the den, so he could drop them off without much fanfare and travel.

Sighing, Brock clicked his tongue and let his latest attempt at creating a denser Augment finally roar out his palm. Immediately, a torrent of flames sputtered out his pathways in various directions, somehow less stable and weaker than usual. He sighed once more. If it wasn’t working, it wasn’t working. He’d just have to try it another day.

“You’re definitely getting closer.” Fon chimed in, her feet on the dashboard as she massaged her calves. They ached from all the walking.

“I’m not…” Harry got up from beside Brock and grumbled. He hadn’t made any progress at all in the control of his Augment, and they quickly guessed it was probably due to a lack of a ‘target’. His Augment seemed more about infesting a target directly than just raw usage like Brock’s, so it made sense.

The older man hopped over and slumped into the back seats of the jeep, before hanging his elbow over his eyes, blotting out the bright sun overhead, “I guess we can add ‘living test subjects’ to our shopping list. Awesome.”

He couldn’t see Fon from the dark embrace of his elbow, but he could already tell she was raising an eyebrow in his direction. He didn’t care and just made to shrug off his jacket and sink into the soft seats below him. Much to his delight, the clothes he had been gifted by ‘Genesis’ - more probably just Adam himself – were highly resistant to the woes and whims of battle, and it was amazing.

Finally, he could fight powerful opponents without becoming naked in the process. How delightful.

Eventually, they once more had to get on the road, so Brock brought up his gps map and estimated their current location to be around the middle of Poland, just off a quick calculation on distance with his sizable Intelligence. They had travelled a little upward off course he felt, but he didn’t mind too much. What were a few more days in a potentially multi-month long trip?

They’d have to cut down through Belarus and approached the stretch of Russia that Adam had warned him against, though Brock wasn’t too worried. He had fought the ‘Tyrant of the Sky’, or Little Shit, to his friends and family, and that was a monstrosity in the 70s. He had to admit, however, he was rather afraid that Tyrants might actually be a sort of special beast that can be found, like the Alphas had been.

That’s another thing I should do once everything’s settled. Go find another Source and check it out.

There should be more, as while seemingly boundless, he doubted the energy of just one would be enough to fuel the entire planet, especially now that it was so much larger. It’d also be good to revisit something that resembled his humble beginnings and absolutely conquer it this time, he thought.

And so began the long trek once more. Harry chatted on about the ‘faked’ moon landing, and Brock could see that Fon was expending great effort to not slap him upside the head. A few times they spotted weaker beasts and Brock made the woman snipe them from several meters away with the bow she kept slung over her back, just to practice.

She missed a lot, but she was getting better and even hit a few of her shots, although they were not at all where she was aiming. Brock had debated on whether just giving her one of the ranged weapons he still had from James was a good idea, but ultimately decided against it. Unlike something that utilised one’s Stats, like the drawstring of a bow, a gun would eventually limit the amount of damage she could do, as it wholly relied on itself.

It’d give her a much-needed short-term boost, sure, but soon the capability for damage would be outstripped by her overall Stats and the weapon would place a limit on her total ability in combat. Harry still used his own occasionally to deliver his poisons from a range, but that was different. He wasn’t entirely reliant on the weapon as his main form of attack.

Maybe a similar thing would happen to Fon’s bow, where her Stats would become so high that the weapon can no longer support them, but when that happens, they’d just get a new one. Technology had always been improving in pre-System Earth, so what was stopping equipment from becoming better and better too?

Actually, the same kinda rule applies to guns too, I guess. Huh.

A few days or so later, they entered the country of Belarus and even visited a few cities. Five of the six had been utterly stripped clean of humanity by the Skin Walkers, and the only inhabited one was holding on by its final dregs, looking almost like a city you’d find in a zombie apocalypse. Their steadfast attitudes seemed to be working at least, as Brock detected no unwanted infiltrators within their ranks.

They had opted to trade a small share of the abundant amount of weapons Brock owned for some more foodstuffs and a day after that they were once more on their way. It was an odd sort of call back to an initial comment Brock had made during his time in the jungle city about I Am Legend.

Civilisation was a lot like that now, all abandoned cities and empty streets, blood and corpses strewn everywhere. If it hadn’t sunk into them about the severity of the issue, it had now. The problem of Skin Walkers was an apocalyptic problem, if nothing was done about it. Brock had to admit, he was scared by the notion.

The trio of people he had saved from the inhabited Skin Walker den had also been dropped off in that apocalyptic city to be cared for. Luckily, the people seemed immensely amicable to the wounded, and they seemed like they’d be in good hands while they recovered.

Then finally, almost two and a half weeks after they had left Paris, after trekking long and hard and visiting the few cities left, the world’s most formidable trio arrived at the border of Russia.

And it was quite a sight.