“Of course you have to fight her. Why would she want to be part of somebody weaker than she already is?”

“But... aren’t you born as strong as I am now? How is anybody still capable of absorbing an Exemplar supposed to beat an adult of your species?!”

“I’m not an idiot, Most Puny. I said Url was injured remember? She’s barely at what you humans call the Fountain stage.”

“The Foundation stage? Doesn’t the Foundation stage range up to ten times as strong as a Core?” I turned to my friends, eyebrows raised in disbelief. When the Elder had said that absorbing one of his people was part of the deal it had sounded more like I would be helping out; I was not sure how I was suddenly expected to beat a Foundation equivalent beast five minutes after completing my Core.

“With pensive consideration, a being at the very beginning of the Foundation stage would perhaps be as much as half-again as powerful as a Peak Core stage cultivator, but as you say, a Foundation cultivator on the cusp of the Pinnacle stage could be as much as a ten-times as powerful.”

“And the thundering apes are well known for being physically stronger for their relative stage.”

Neither Reff nor Darina’s words were filling me with confidence, but at least I knew I was now about in-line with where a person of my physical age should be, so any challenges I faced would be faced with the relative physical gifts of a native, even if I still possessed a distinct lack of general knowledge when it came to my new home world.

“Well, I guess I agreed to it already, and sort of already ate the reward, so...” I was hesitant, I could hear the doubt in my own words, but a deal was a deal and I did not think the gruff Elder was going to take a rain check.

“Good! This way.” The hulking ape-man accepted a huge fruit from Borr and turned away as he munched on the thing, skin and all. We followed him through the assemblage of giant nests until we came to one specimen which to my untrained eye looked pretty much like all the others.

“Oi, Url, I brought a human like you wanted! He’s kind of puny, but he isn’t running away or pre-smashed.” The Elder glanced down at me, his eyes flicking to my missing arm. “He is missing an arm though, but they say he’ll get it back.”

The responding roar was actually unintelligible to me, which I found surprising by that point. I wondered why I could apparently understand the Elder and his shadow when they roared at each other, but not from this Url; perhaps it was a function of intelligence, or a result of her injury?

“I know it’s been a long time, but they’re really fragile, and what do you mean what kind of human? They’re a human!”

Another series of thundering roars came from within the nest and I saw Rainmaker glance at Borr as if to say, ‘Is she serious?’. Borr, for his part just nodded back in silence, at which point the Elder turned to me, a look of exasperation on his face.

“What kind of human are you?”

“Ugh, I’m just human?” I pointed at Reff and Riffa, “They’re not, they’re risi. But I’m human.”

“What? That’s stupid. You look exactly the same. Stupid humans...”

While I had to agree that we were all the same basic shape, I did not think that the limit of our differences; not that I thought those differences terribly important. I supposed he was just using ‘human’ in place of ‘people’, but I refrained from asking him if his definition made him a human. I did not think he would take that well, either.

“He says he’s a human. Now get out here and fight him or I’m going to take him to see the phoenix, and then you’ll never get any Void bound humans!”

There was an audible grumble from within the complex conglomeration of sticks, locks and grasses but after a few moments an ape jumped out from within, landing just to the side of us and looking at our group grumpily. She stood about as tall as Rainmaker, though she looked more like Borr. The only real difference between her and Borr was the scar running down the length of her body.

“Uh, hi, Url. I’m Hunter... nice to meet you?”

The slightly shorter ape lumbered over to me and poked me in the chest with one thick finger, pushing me back a step. I hoped she would not be as fast as she was strong, because in a test of might I was not sure she would have much trouble simply... smashing me.

“Now that you’re all introduced, can we start? I have important things to eat.”

“Uh, sure? As ready as I’m going-”

“Have you located your second centre yet, Hunter?”

I blinked as Darina interrupted me, and I turned to her as my mind raced; now that she mentioned it, I recalled something about having to find a second centre in order to have a place to store your Exemplar... I had completely forgotten. Imagining the scene where I just stood there looking stupid, if I managed to defeat Url, made me grimace.

“Shit, no. Thanks Darina, that might have been embarrassing...”

“Ugh, are you telling me there’s more to do? You humans make everything so complicated. Just get stronger, it’s not that hard!”

“Yeah, I guess, sorry.” I wished I could just ‘get stronger’ - though that was a fairly accurate representation of my experience since arriving, but I knew it was more complicated than that. I did not know why beasts apparently had an easier time of it, but at least nobody was trying to eat me or turn me into money... well, people had tried to eat me, but... never mind.

“I remember somebody mentioning that I had to find an absence of Praxis, is that right?”

“With confident assurance, that is correct, Hunter. There will be a place within you devoid of Praxis; once you are aware of it, it will become obvious, and your inner-eye should be able to enter without difficulty.”

“Reff’s right, and it should be slightly easier for you, given the density of your energy channels.”

“In hesitant revelation, it can be uncomfortable, discovering your second centre; for me, it was like discovering I was suddenly hungry after being full for a long time. It was... disconcerting.” Riffa added.

Reff and Darina both nodded slightly at Riffa’s words; it occurred to me that I may experience that slightly less, given that my Core had been mostly incomplete until less than an hour before.

Closing my eyes, I quickly focused my awareness inside, gazing in wonder at my complete core again for a moment, before feeling my body; it was strange, I had had enough Praxis to fill my channels for over a week, but now that my Core was complete, there was a kind of pressure inside of me, like the energy running through me was being pushed rather than merely flowing. From what I knew of the process, my Core would now passively refine Experience in to Praxis, and perhaps it was this process that was causing the strange sense of spiritual fullness.

Moving my attention through my body, I followed the myriad channels until I reached my heart, where just as my friend has said, I discovered a marked absence of the potent energy. I felt surprise, as I turned my inner-eye towards the area – I had thought my energy channels had followed my entire vascular system, which should include paths to and from the heart. I wondered how I had never noticed this gap.

I pushed in towards the gap, and with a moment of resistance so brief that it may have been my imagination, I entered my second centre – my heart centre. The inside of my newly revealed centre was empty – which I expected, but I could see the energy channels entering now that I was inside of it. I gazed around the confines of the spiritual space in wonder as I saw the Praxis flow into the centre, but rather than stay and pool as it did in my original soul sea, it flowed around the edges like some kind of superfluid, before exiting at the opposite side. I pondered that revelation for a moment – clearly, there was something missing to allow a place for the Praxis to inhabit, which I guessed to be the Exemplar. From my limited knowledge, I knew that this space was eventually meant to be filled with Veritas, the next stage of energy refinement, but I thought that like my conversion of Experience into Praxis, the process would all take place here, with one slowly replacing the other. With a frown, I shifted back to my Focus and felt around, looking for Experience but not finding any. It seemed that having completed my Core, I no longer had a space in which to store the base energy and wondered at what that meant for the simple techniques I had developed for travel, amongst other things. It occurred to me that the configuration of my centres meant that I was unlikely to fully lose Praxis as a resource, merely gain another.

After a few minutes of my internal musing, I was pulled back to myself by another poke to my chest, and I opened my eyes to see the huge head of Url, inches from my own.

“Shit!” I took a step back before I caught myself. “Sorry! You, uh, surprised me. I think I’m good to go...?”

*

***

*

I had said that I was good to go, but if I was being perfectly honest with myself, I was having doubts. First of all, I had no idea how strong this ape was; Rainmaker had said she had been injured, but what did that mean? Was she equivalent to the Core stage? Path, Foundation? It did not matter of course, I did not think she would kill me, and I had faced off against stronger people who definitely would have.

I gazed over at Url, who seemed eager, tapping the ground with her huge fists as her eyes locked on mine. I felt my heart starting to beat faster and I breathed in a steady breath.

“Okay, fight already.”

I blinked at the sudden call to fight from the Elder, but did not have time to hesitate for much longer than that, as Instinctive Precognition flickered to life and without conscious thought, I Focused for the first time since I had completed my Core. Snapping lines of blue-white lightning blazed around me; I was not pushing hard, but the power I was putting out was at least as much as when I had tried to fight Cat-Guy back at the barracks.

The world slowed around me and I dived to the side, still acting purely on instinct as my opponent came crashing down in the space I had vacated with a rolling boom.

Rolling to my feet, I looked at Url as she turned to look back at me and roared like a storm. Her fur was a flowing mass of energy, blue-white and violet as it snapped away from her body and back, and even her eyes were emitted violent arcs of electricity. She was living lightning and it did nothing for my hopes of winning.

With a sharp crack, she came at me again leaving an arcing filament of power between her and the place she leapt from; she was fast, very fast, but I was ready. Unlike many of my opponents, I could follow her movements, and despite the fact that Predictive Precognition was not giving me very detailed reactions, it still let me react far faster than I should be able to.

As the beast flew at me, I leapt sideways and was catapulted twice as far as I had aimed for, though it did get me well outside of her range. I shifted my balance as I landed, trying to compensate for the added power while keeping my feet and this time my Instincts launched me into a backflip high into the air as I saw the coruscating mass of lightning pass below me.

Landing, I reoriented and focused, knowing that I needed to get a handle on my increased physical ability; unlike my gradual growth over the last couple of months, this was a pretty significant change, leaving me maybe twice as strong and as fast as I had been, with no time to grow used to it.

Reaching towards my Core, I increased the tempo of its supply of Praxis to my Focus and watched as the world slowed further around me, reaching a crawling state I could not ever remember reaching previously, even as the lines of light I was generating multiplied and joined together into ropes of energy as thick around as my leg, the blue shifting into violet.

Url turned and came at me again, this time at a run rather than leaping, the ground shaking with each impact of her massive fists and feet. She was fast, but I was faster. I ran to meet her and stepped around the first punch she sent my way, feeling the shock as it smashed the air aside only inches from me. I snapped a fist out into her face, and then two more as she tried to shift her balance to punch again. I had no illusions that my own lightning would do much to a creature seemingly made mostly from the stuff, but I hoped the blow would be enough to slow her down for a moment; my only shot was to keep piling on the damage gradually, because I did not think I would last through a single one of her punches.

As I went to step in for another punch, the great ape snapped her arm back in towards me, but I had warning and avoided the blow by shifting to the side, under the arm she was resting her weight on. Url growled and the earth vibrated slightly at the sound, raising the hair on the back of my neck even as she reared up, raising both huge fists into the air above her before bringing them crashing down towards me.

Not wanting to spend the rest of my short life as a pancake, I rolled forward between her legs; practicing against people much bigger than me was definitely proving itself useful, though that was not something I had tried against Reff more than once. But against the ape, who was already in the middle of one massive blow, it seemed safe enough.

I rolled out of the way just in time, and came to my feet behind her just in time to be knocked off them once more as the shockwave from Url’s double-handed blow rippled through the earth beneath us. She was absolutely a great deal stronger than I was, but I thought I was faster, and as the saying goes, you cannot kill what you cannot hit.

Kipping to my feet half-stepped to the side, turning my body slightly to avoid a short-kick from the ape; there had not been a great part of her power in the blow, but when you are strong enough to cause minor earthquakes, not-a lot of your strength can be deadly.

Having avoided the kick, quick-stepped and drove a fist into the back of her other knee; her legs were short and it would not be as debilitating for her as it would for a longer-legged creature, but I would take what I could get. The blow landed, and while the leg did buckle slightly, it was not much and I grimaced even as I dived away to put some distance between us, and to avoid the twisting counter.

Url was not a trained fighter, but she was an animal with at least a modicum of intelligence, and she used her advantages well, which was to say, the nigh-unstoppable force that was her natural – or Cultivated – might. She closed with me again, raining blows from above which I dodged again and again by the narrowest of margins, landing punches one after the other, though it was only really possible to reach her face when she overextended and came to close the ground. I did not want to jump; my advantage lay in speed, and I knew from past experience that if both of my feet left the ground, I would lose a lot of that, leaving me unable to maneuverer and vulnerable. That was also the reason I was avoiding kicks – I needed both feet in order to keep me a step ahead of pulverising rain of her rapid-fire fists.

The fight had been going on for a few minutes when I saw my chance; stepping back around her left most blow and putting her arm between us caused the thundering ape to extend over it, even as she drew the limb back, leaving he face close enough to strike. Three, four times I exploited this habit before I thought she was growing wise to it; deciding to change things up, I went in the other direction, hoping the same thing would happen.

Stepping back and around her right fist, she instinctively did the same again and I grinned, even as I launched a left cross out to smack into her unprotected face.

Of course, I no longer had a left fist, so the motion had much less impact than I had hoped for. I felt my arm move, and nothing happened; stopping, I stared at the place my forearm should have been, the shock of the missing limb really hitting me for the first time. Since I had lost it, the pain had vanished as it was healed. I had gained near certain hope that I would get it back, and even had my Core and a perfect Exemplar handed to me. With the thrill of battle, I... I had just forgotten. In that moment, as I stared at my arm, I felt Instinctive Precognition stir within me, but the shock kept me rooted in place, staring. Even as one massive, lightning-furred fist smashed into me. And then I was unconscious.

Again.