After about five minutes, Bronwyn had the leather armor equipped. It wasn’t anything too fancy, just a leather vest, pants, and boots. The leather was a dark brown, and the buckles were made of a sturdy gray-green metal she didn’t recognize. It fit her perfectly and was fairly light. She felt like she hadn’t lost any range of motion. “One slight issue,” she sighed as she tied her curly red hair back into a loose ponytail. “No head protection.”

Bronwyn knelt to lift the first gauntlet, and it was lighter than she expected it to be, significantly so. She’d always been strong; she lifted weights regularly and practiced various MMA fighting styles several times a week; her only off day was Saturday. Still, though, there was something different. She looked the same as she had on Earth, but Bronwyn could feel that she was stronger. She slipped the gauntlets on, noticing they were made of heavy plates of lobstered metal, the same gray-green metal as the buckles on her armor. The metal plates were attached to a mail glove lined with soft leather. The gauntlets fit all the way up to about an inch below her elbow and had leather straps on the underside to secure them onto her arms. Once strapped on, they weren’t exactly weightless, but she could move her arms easily.

Satisfied with her choice of weaponry, she took the gauntlets off for now and sat down to examine the small pouch of gems and the book titled “Energy Core Manual.” The book was a rather dense piece of literature detailing how energy flows through the body, how nodes help gather your energy in certain areas, and the effects of intelligence and will on your energy storage and expenditure. The Core the System awarded her was tier two and had three nodes. The central core was the first node, meant to be placed near her solar plexus. The other two nodes were smaller and could be placed anywhere in her body; the placement was up to her. Bronwyn decided that she would put one in each hand. Her eventual hope was that the increased storage of Energy in her fists would help her channel energy into her punches. The process of merging an Energy Core with oneself was not overly complicated. She simply had to place the Core directly on her skin in the correct area and meditate on the image of it slowly pressing through, embedding itself within her.

Bronwyn lay on her back in the grassy field; the soft light blue stalks of grass were almost as comfortable as her bed back on Earth. She placed the largest of the three crystals directly over her solar plexus; it was bright orange, about the size of her fist, and seemed to thrum with potential. She closed her eyes and imagined it slowly sinking into her abdomen. The process took a while, maybe twenty minutes. The core felt hot as it phased through her skin. It was not quite hot enough to hurt but just enough to be slightly uncomfortable. It left her with a sheen of sweat on her forehead as she tried not to become distracted by the heat and focused intently on the image of the Core forming in her center. When it was fully absorbed, she lay there for a moment, staring up at the sky. It was a sunny day with a few bright white clouds. She noticed birds for the first time above her, small, many-colored avians. They ranged in color from white to red to pastel green, and they had long ribbon-like feathers trailing from their tails as they soared through the sky. She wondered if removing the barrier around the meadow had allowed them to start flying overhead.

When she finally sat up, she could no longer feel the Core. Well, that is to say, she could no longer feel a large rock in the center of her body. She could feel warmth there when she focused intently, charged with potential Energy. She remembered one of the earth spells she had practiced earlier in the tutorial and attempted to call upon it to shield her torso. A rough stone shell encased her chest, stomach, and back as she did. This effect was much stronger than the jumble of gravel-like rock that the tutorial spell summoned; she surmised that the improved Core must have enhanced the spell somehow. It didn’t last very long, about a minute, before it shimmered away into a silvery gray mist.

Amazed by the power of the Core, she hurried to read about how to connect the smaller nodes to it. Reading the manual, she learned the process was much the same as with the Core. She was to place each node on the part of her body she wanted it to phase into and meditate on the image of it doing so. However, a second step was required: she’d need to create a pathway or channel from the Core to the node. According to the manual, the pathway could be imagined and designed in many different ways, but these nodes were earth attuned, and the connection would literally be burned into her. She didn’t think that sounded very fun.

Bronwyn studied the diagrams in the manual and thought of her options: she could just have a direct line from the core to the node, have a path that followed her veins, or even one that was more on the surface level, flowing along her skin. After some consideration, she decided she would attempt to form a path that was more like a thick ribbon than a straight line. It would travel up to and fill her entire pectoralis, climb up to her shoulder and deltoid muscles, and spiral down her arm, passing through every muscle. According to the manual, such a long pathway would slow down the Energy; however, it would, hopefully, allow her to channel more of it at once.

She sat in the meadow with her legs crossed, her right hand in her lap, holding the first of the nodes. The node was a perfect sphere and looked identical to the core, only much smaller at about one inch in diameter. Phasing it into her hand only took a few minutes, faster than the Core, and it didn’t feel nearly as hot, just a slight comforting warmth. Then came the process of connecting the two. Bronwyn took a deep breath and started to imagine the pathway she thought of earlier, the bright orange glow of the Core traveling up from her solar plexus to her right pectoral. As soon as she imagined the pathway exiting the Core, she felt a burning heat in her chest that caused her to gasp in pain. The raw energy was burning this new path into her body. It was excruciating, but she could feel it working. She knew she couldn’t stop, fearing that she would have to start all over if she did.

Bronwyn could barely handle the pain. As it coursed past her chest, it engulfed her shoulder in agony as if she had just dislocated it and torn the muscles apart in the process. Forcing the thick ribbon of energy past her shoulder and spiraling down her arm nearly caused her to blackout. As she fell forward, she slammed her right fist down into the ground and forced herself to finish. She sat there for a moment, fist planted, as the pain slowly subsided to a low burning, and the final tears of pain ran down her face and landed in the grass.

Eventually, after a long rest, she felt strong enough to move. She lifted her head, holding her arm out in front of her, startled by what she saw. She had been squeezing her eyes shut, focusing on the path the Energy was taking through her body, so she hadn’t noticed that the Energy had burned not only through her muscle and inner tissue but left a dark charcoal-black marking across her skin. It looked almost like a tattoo and traveled as a two-inch-thick ribbon across the path the energy followed. It wasn’t the worst look; honestly, she usually gave most of her VR avatars tattoos.

Though she dreaded it, she set to work on the second node right away. The brief respite she enjoyed while the warm node sank into her flesh was quickly overshadowed by the agony of creating her pathway. Knowing what was coming didn’t lessen the burning; in fact, the anticipation might have made it worse.

When all was said and done, she had completed connecting the node in each hand to her Core. She was exhausted, the muscles in her arms ached, and her skin felt like she had the worst sunburn of her life. The markings on her upper body mirrored each other perfectly, making a circuit from her core to the palm of each hand. She was glad to be done and glad it worked out so well, but she certainly hadn’t made things easy on herself. Several times during the process, she cursed her need always to try to be the best - it would have been a lot less painful to just run a straight pathway from the nodes to her Core.

Despite being extremely curious about the settlement stone, Bronwyn was exhausted physically and mentally. She looked around the meadow; it was getting later in the evening, and most of the other colonists were sitting around campfires cooking the foods the system had provided. During the cooking portion of the orientation, each person was supplied with enough food for about seven days. Bronwyn’s camp was on the outskirts of the meadow, closer to the eastern trees than most of the other colonists. She had wanted enough space to try and rush through the tutorial as quickly as possible without any of the other settlers perhaps recognizing her and bothering her for help and advice.

She noticed that many of the colonists had formed into groups over the past few days, clustering their tents together based on either past friendships, family ties, or perhaps just common interests and the desire to not be alone in this strange new world. She wasn’t sure how she felt. She was lonely, maybe, as she sat by her small tent and started the fire under her cooking pot. She knew there would be plenty of time in the coming days to make friendships, though, and right now, keeping her lead was what was most important.

Bronwyn sat and stared at the flames, her stew slowly cooking. She missed her home, her friends, her family. Her mission had been critical; she and everyone else knew that. Every person aboard the Pilgrim 9 had a purpose, a reason to be there. Bronwyn was one of the best, if not the best, VR players and pilots in settled space. She had been recruited by Arthur Ballard himself to pilot the Titan-9, a forty-foot tall mech with two purposes: initially, she was to use it to help build the settlement on the new planet, and when construction was complete, she’d use it for combat and scouting. However, their ship never landed, and the Titan-9 didn’t seem to have made the journey, either. If she were going to protect these people, she’d have to do it herself.

With a renewed sense of purpose, Bronwyn finished off her bowl of stew and crawled into her tent. She was quick to fall into a dreamless sleep.