Victor sank back into the cushions of the coach, the scents of perfume, sweat, and old smoke wafting up around him. As he swallowed the fruit, which hadn’t tasted like a plum, more like an orange with the texture of a banana, warmth pulsed through the flesh that it touched, and then in a wave from the center of his belly out to his limbs. He felt a buzzing sensation all over his body, and then he felt heavy, like he was sinking into the center of the world, pulling the coach and everything else along with him. Waves of pink light, darkening to violet, rolled over his vision, and he lost himself watching the patterns of shifting colors. When he started to feel himself again - began to remember that he was a person - he became aware of the rattling clatter of the coach wheels outside the window and the bump and sway it made as it rolled down the street. “What happened?” he muttered, mouth feeling like he’d tried to swallow a cup of dusty sand.

“What happened? You got a tip worth more than I made at the last three Fight Nights.” Yund sat across from him, eyes narrowed as he studied Victor. “Well, what happened? I can see your race advanced. How much?”

“You can tell?” Victor coughed. “Hold on,” he said and thought about this status page:

Status

Name:

Victor Sandoval

Race:

Human - Base 4

Class:

Spirit Champion

Level:

10

Core:

Spirit Class - Base 4

Energy Affinity:

3.1, Rage 9.1

Energy:

420/420

Strength:

25

Vitality:

20

Dexterity:

17

Agility:

17

Intelligence:

10

Will:

10

Points Available:

0

Titles & Feats:

–

Skills:

System Language Integration - Not Upgradeable Unarmed Combat - Basic Knife Combat - Basic Axe Mastery - Basic Spear Mastery - Basic Bludgeon Mastery - Basic Grappling - Improved Berserk - Basic Sovereign Will - Basic Channel Spirit - Basic

“It says base four next to my race now.”

“Three ranks. From one fruit. Well, nicely done, kid. I hope you live long enough to appreciate it.” Yund folded his arms on his chest and visibly sulked.

“What’s the point of racial advancements anyway?” Victor held up his hands and noticed that some of the scars he’d accumulated recently were gone, and almost all of them had faded to faint white marks.

“If I had a mirror, you’d know. When you stand up, you’ll notice. You’re bigger, taller. More than that, your body has improved from your blood to your heart to your bones. It can hold more Energy now, which means a higher level cap. If you had a peaceful life, you’d live a lot longer now, too.”

“Awesome,” Victor said, running his fingers along his face, trying to notice anything different. He felt good, but other than that, he seemed the same. When they got back to the Wagon Wheel, and Victor clambered out of the coach, he noticed a remarkable difference: he was looking at Yund almost eye to eye. “Fucking hell, I did grow!”

“Ponda!” Yund barked as they strode through the door. The big Vodkin came waddling out of the mess hall.

“Yeah, Boss?”

“Put him back in his cage and put a collar on him. He’s grown a bit much to be wandering without a leash.” Victor felt a little surge of heat in his Core when Yund spoke about him like a dog, and he snarled involuntarily. “Here, kid.” Yund held out his hand, “you dropped this when you ate the fruit.” Victor reached out, and Yund pressed the scroll with his cultivation method on it to him.

“Oh, thanks, Yund.”

“You mean Boss.”

“Right. Thanks, Boss.” Victor walked over to Ponda and followed him to the pens. He was pleased to see that Ponda didn’t seem so big to him anymore, either.

“Getting bigger, eh, kid?” Ponda asked as he unlocked his cage.

“Yeah, got a prize for winning.” Victor shrugged and ducked into the cage. Ponda didn’t close it right away but pulled out a dull iron ring about four inches in diameter, holding it up to Victor’s neck. “I think that’s too small, dude.”

“Nah, it’ll stretch when I activate it. Hold still.” He pressed one edge of the ring to Victor’s neck, then Victor felt it get warm, then hot, then seemed to flow around his skin, stretching itself into a ring of metal that snuggly wrapped around his neck. “Don’t do anything dumb with this on, kid. Boss can kill you from a mile away as long as you’re wearing this.”

“Alright.” Victor didn’t like the sound of that. It made him think of a VR flick he saw where prisoners’ heads exploded if they tried to run away from the warden. Ponda didn’t seem to care to stick around to hear his concerns, though; he slammed the gate shut and walked out of the pens without a backward glance.

“Where’d they take you? Did you really have to grow even taller? You were already a freak compared to most Shadeni.” Victor turned to see Belsa sitting in her corner of the cage, green eyes glinting brightly in the shadows.

“I had to go to this rich lady’s house and fight a criminal. I won, so she gave me a prize,” Victor gestured at his body, “racial upgrade.”

“You really know how to paint the scene with your words.” Belsa laughed.

“Damn, you’re in a better mood. Teasing me, huh?” Victor moved to his corner and sat down, wondering if he could use the scroll in such dim lighting.

“I guess I’m relieved that I don't have to get to know a new cell-mate yet. You might be rude, but at least I know you. Who knows what I’d get next! What’s that?”

“Alright, nosey chica, it’s a cultivation method, I guess. I’m supposed to stare at the runes or whatever.” Victor ran a finger along the loose edge of the scroll, pulling it under the red seal, and it broke away into little crumbles. Victor had a sudden thought, “Hey, when I say ‘girl,’ what word do you hear?”

“Girl?”

“What about when I say ‘chica?’”

“Girl?”

“That shit’s crazy. I just said ‘girl’ in two different languages, and you heard only one.”

“It’s the language integration. The System makes us all hear our native language when others speak.”

“Yeah, I get it. It’s just fucking weird.”

“Fucking?”

“C’mon, you can guess what it means.” Victor unrolled the scroll and saw that the runes were faintly shimmering symbols of letters that he’d never seen in his life. Belsa said something, but he’d tuned her out, staring at the runes as they shifted ever so slightly on the page. Suddenly one of them moved more than the others, then it popped out into the air. Victor almost dropped the scroll in surprise, but he held on, and then more runes popped off the paper and began to flow into a glowing line that streamed toward Victor’s eyes. As the runes hit his eyes, they became a pulsing beam in his vision. A dull ache started to throb at the base of his skull. Just as he began to fear his head would burst, it came to a stop.

***Congratulations, you’ve learned a new skill: Spirit Core Cultivation Drill - Basic.***

“I mean, that was cool, but I don’t know if I really like the feeling,” he said, mostly to himself. He thought about cultivating Energy and found that he suddenly understood a great deal more about the subject. Thanks to Yrella’s guidance and his experimentation, he’d figured out a lot of the process. One thing he knew now was that Spirit Cores couldn’t absorb unattuned Energy. He had to process any Energy he cultivated into rage-attuned Energy. There were ways to do so, and it turned out the one he’d figured out was the crudest, most dangerous method recorded in the manual.

There was a method to memorize and imprint the feelings associated with memories that evoked strong emotion so that you could study those feelings but not relive your trauma over and over - the pure essence of rage rather than rage-soaked memories. Victor found he hadn’t done everything wrong, though - you needed those memories to study in order to develop your meditation on the feelings and essence of the emotion. Because the manual was for general Spirit Core cultivation, it didn’t deal explicitly with rage. Rather, it spoke in generalities about ‘emotions’ and their essence.

Another thing the manual provided was the drill for cultivation itself. It was an exercise that began with Victor studying the essence of his attunement, creating a self-propagating feedback loop within his Core. As the Energy became too intense, he was supposed to push it through his pathways in a specific pattern, to create a loop that brought in external Energy, converted it to rage-attuned Energy, and then directed it back to his Core. It was similar to what Victor had been doing but far more efficient.

“Did it work?” Belsa had scooted closer to him and was staring expectantly.

“Yeah. Got a cultivation drill.” He moved to sit in the position Yrella had taught him and closed his eyes, ready to begin the possibly arduous process of developing rage constructs to study so that he could stop reliving all of his most painful memories.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna try it out! Chill out, please. Go do some meditating or something.” He spoke sharply, and kind of regretted it when she looked down quickly and scooted back. He almost took the words back, saying he was sorry, but didn’t, and it pissed him off that he was being such an asshole. He decided to use that feeling and quickly started following the cultivation manual's process for studying a feeling and turning it into a pure construct. It was kind of like a mnemonic trick or some sort of self-hypnosis, but he understood it so thoroughly, thanks to the way the System put it in his head, that he performed it flawlessly. He found that he could study the construct of the feeling caused by his interaction with Belsa to start a hot pulse in his Core, actually generating Energy with his rage. The best part was that he could study that feeling, experience the rage, and feed off it without the emotional baggage of remembering Belsa’s crestfallen face. It was like he pulled the feeling out and could leave the memory in his subconscious.

Victor stopped, letting his Core wind down, and then he purposefully thought about how he’d snapped at Belsa. The shame and guilt were still there, but not the rage. Had he really separated that feeling from the memory? “How fucking weird!” Belsa shifted but didn’t say anything. “Hey, I’m sorry I snapped at you. I have a lot on my mind, and I couldn’t think.”

“It’s fine.”

Victor knew very well that it wasn’t ‘fine,’ but he figured he could try to cheer her up tomorrow. He’d said he was sorry, and she could sleep on that. If that little surge of anger allowed him to cultivate rage, how would a bigger memory work? Could he separate the rage from a truly white-hot fury-inducing episode in his life? He was too chicken to even contemplate thinking about Yrella’s death right now, and he was tired of soaking in the frustration of his parent’s car wreck, so he picked something a little less tender: the time he’d been hanging at his aunty’s house with his cousin Tricia and her friends. The time they’d been speaking Spanish, and Victor, barely able to follow a slowly worded directive from his Abuela, couldn’t follow along. His cousin had said, “Better speak English; his mom was white.” Her friends had laughed and said something in Spanish that, again, Victor hadn’t been able to follow. He’d been embarrassed and angry at being singled out, so he’d lashed out. He was a nine-year-old boy, and he’d cussed at his cousin, called her a bitch, and run to hide.

Victor focused on the memory, studied the rage, and used the method in the manual to create a construct from it. He was fascinated to see that most of the anger he felt in that memory was aimed at himself. He’d been angry for not being better at Spanish. He’d been angry at himself for not being able to defend his mom; he’d been angry at himself for feeling small and unable to stick up for himself. Most of all, he’d been angry at himself for reacting so harshly to his cousin; they’d never gotten along the same since that day. When Victor built the construct of all that rage, he found it flamed hotter and quickly started pulsing in his Core.

On a whim, he added the construct from his interaction with Belsa, and he found that their ability to generate rage complimented each other. Victor ran through his drill twice, noting that he’d built his Core far more significantly than in an entire afternoon of cultivation with his old method. He wanted to stop, though, and analyze the memory from which he’d built the rage construct. When he thought about that day, all he felt was guilt and a sense of loss. He really had pulled the anger out of the memory. Was it hypnosis? Was it magic? There was so much to learn and understand about how the System and Energy worked, and Victor knew he was only scratching the surface.

Not wanting to tangle with any more memories, Victor spent the evening cultivating around the two constructs he’d made. When he received a message announcing he’d improved his Core by another rank, he almost whooped aloud but caught himself when he noticed Belsa’s sleeping form. He found that he wasn’t tired at all; in fact, he felt energized, and he knew it was from the racial upgrades he’d just gone through. He went back to cultivating and didn’t stop until he got another System message and saw the sunlight poking in through the high boards on the east wall of the building.

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 11 Spirit Champion. You have gained 7 will, 7 vitality, and have 7 attribute points to allocate.***