*Several Years Later*

I couldn’t help but smile as I watched two of my best friends try to maim each other. Both nearly fourteen now, Tetra was growing into a lithe and shapely young woman, while Wulfric was a hulking figure straight out of Conan the Barbarian. He was STILL more than four times my weight, even though I was almost nine years old myself!

Tetra’s shimmering silver scales flashed in the reflected light of the lanterns hung around the training room, causing Wulfric’s aim with his thrown dagger to be just off the mark. It struck her shoulder, but the blade simply skipped right off her steel-hard scales. We had both learned that you needed either a direct hit, or a heck of a lot of force, to get through her defense. She had an incredibly rare combination of mutations; both hard metallic skin as well as scales, and the combined effect was far greater than the sum of its parts.

Tetra laughed as Wulfric took a step towards her and promptly slipped, forgetting to watch his footing yet again. Tetra had adapted to fighting on the icy surfaces I created far better than Wulfric had, and could usually defeat him in any kind of rough terrain – but on even ground the situation was more than reversed. The difference in their strengths and sizes was just too great for her superior speed and dexterity to overcome.

“Incoming!” I shouted, following my announcement directly by raising my right hand and creating dozens of blunted shards of ice with shot towards the pair of them. Tetra quickly flipped herself to the side, dropping down behind the cover of a steel beam, but not before one of the shards smashed into her thigh, causing her to let out a muted shriek of pain.

Wulfric was far less lucky, being caught flatfooted from the start, but he still managed to roll over and protect his head as well as he could. Nearly a half dozen shards smashed into his body, but he was still up and running towards the iron pillar before Tetra had managed to stabilize her footing.

Or so we both thought. Tetra suddenly dropped just as Wulfric’s practice axe passed where her head had been, throwing herself at his legs and thrusting a dull short sword deep into Wulfric’s belly. I winced involuntarily – from personal experience I knew that gut-wounds hurt more than nearly anything else. Poor Wulfric gasped in pain, his body shuddering from the injury he had sustained, and Tetra took the chance to roll out of his way and dash towards the far side of the room.

She fought to smash the ice barrier I had erected around her goal, getting it open just as Wulfric was pulling himself back to his feet again. “I got your flag!” She yelled in victory, holding it up over her head to signify her win. I clapped my applause as Wulfric frowned for a second then smiled. He was still limping as he made his way over to shake her hand (a gesture I had taught them), but all of his wounds were nearly heald again by the time he got to her.

“How long do you have left?” I called out, moving towards them. I started melting a batch of ice, letting the cascade of water was the floor and run down towards a drain I had created a few years ago.

Tetra smiled at me, still holding the flag, “About half an hour!” I knew she and Wulfric would be busy sharing pointers for the next few minutes, but that would still leave me plenty of time to spar with one of them myself (usually the victor).

Shortly after my near-death-experience with the ‘test’ that apparently happens to powerful cultivators, I decided that I didn’t actually want to die again, at least not for a long while. So I started looking over my power set, going over the plethora of rules I had set for myself as part of my effort to stabilize my cultivation. It didn’t take me long to find my solution: Temporary regeneration.

But it took me over two years to finish buying it. The original package was 45 CP, but I as I practiced using it I kept on improving and refining it to make it more useful in actual combat, although it was still far more useful in a controlled training situation.

The final power set ended up costing me a whopping 91 CP, but allowed me to imbue anyone I could touch with the ability to regenerate from any non-mortal injury for nearly an hour. We had been hesitant to test the limits of the power at first, but Tetra had decided that she wanted to see how far it would go. I still shuddered thinking about the details, but suffice it to say that by the time she was done we were more that certain that the pain of being beaten up was even WORSE if you were constantly regenerating from it...

And from there… she got the idea that we should start doing real war-games, the kind that you would normally need a team of healers for. Wulfric was surprisingly okay with the idea, but at first I hadn’t liked putting my powers to the test in such a… painful… manner. But Tetra eventually got her way, and here we are. One thing I can say for sure is that fighting without having to worry about minor injuries is an INCREDIBLE way to improve. Blocking a careful practice swing is worlds away from blocking a thrust that might crack a rib.

The only downside of my TR power was that I could only use it a few times before being nearly exhausted, and I needed to consume a sample of the blood of anyone I wanted to use my ability on – likely something to do with the level of connection needed to affect someone other than myself in such an intimate way.

Which was something I was learing about my own cultivation technique... sure, I could design my own powers… but there were always things I didn’t expect. This was the real-world, after all, and even with the infinite variations apparently allowed to a Celestial Cultivator like me, there appeared to be some unfathomable universal constants I had to follow.

I had also discovered that once I spent CP on a power there was no going back: In fact, I had to spend even MORE points to get rid of a power, making it a net negative gain. But what I could do was ADD to an existing power, increasing either the scope or the magnitude of its effects.

The most confusing part was that, according to the System, this wasn’t part of my cultivation technique, but some kind of rule which applied to everyone, regardless of how they practiced! The implications of this discovery were huge, but I had no way to check what other rules might exist; the System was great for verifying something I had thought of, but it had never once provided me with new information. Meaning if there were other rules out there… I would have to stumble across them on my own.

And then there was the fact that after I bought a power I had to learn how to use the damn thing! I had purchased my Ice Package about two years ago, but it had taken me up until just a few months ago before I had figured out that I could actually shoot shards of ice from my hands!

“Ready!” Called Tetra, interrupting my thoughts. I grinned at her, quickly imbuing myself with Temporary regeneration as I jogged over to meet her.

“Alright, you won capture the flag, so you call the game.” I told her.

She smirked. “Wulfric and me against you, no powers, only quarter strength energy transfers, but speedup is allowed.”

My mouth fell open. She was out for blood! Over the last few years we had all developed a rather frightening tolerance for pain (it becomes less of a big deal once you learn the wound will only be around for a second or two), but that didn’t mean I liked getting beat up...

But... we were graduating soon, and I think she meant this as kind of a symbolic gesture of how far we had come.

“Alright. Weapons?” I asked hopefully, and she nodded. I wouldn’t stand much chance against the two of them with all the restrictions she had placed on me, but I’d do a LOT better with a pair of practice swords than with my bare hands. Even with the ability to kick myself into a higher gear, by doubling the rate at which I moved through time, they had an obvious advantage in strength, coordination, and numbers.

“Bring him those axes you forged last month!” Tetra called over to Wulfric. He had decided to join me as an apprentice at the Smithy in our second year at Academy, and he was already my one of my father’s favorite apprentices. Having spent time at the forge with him, under the watchful eye of Jaws, Wulfric was starting to feel like more of a brother to me than a friend.

But none of that stopped him from grinning wickedly as he came over with two of the largest axes I had ever seen. I stared at Tetra as she reached up and innocently started tapping on one of her horns (a habit we had both picked up from Master Jaduk).

This was going to HURT. A nervous laugh bubbled up my throat, though I tried to fight it, and soon I wasn’t able to stop as both Wulfric and Tetra joined in my mirth.

---------------------------

Wolfram sent.

His situation had gotten a lot better over the last few years. His father had tested how far he had gotten with the House Spiritwind Cultivation Technique (which was one of the Grand Prayers, from what we could tell) last year, and announced shortly afterwards that Wolfram was now officially the Third Heir of House Spiritwind. He had only given me a bare-bones description of what had happened, but from what I gathered the ‘test’ had been pretty intense.

I sent him a mental image of what the three of us had gone through today. I sent.

This was followed by yet more images of mirth,

I sent him a smirk, Of course he was right, but at the same time we had all agreed that they needed harsh training to surpass the nobles in The City. Then there was the fact that Tetra was the real driving force behind everything… it was almost frightening how motivated she was sometimes.

He asked me. We had both been pondering that issue for the last few years… it seemed that while I could sense the energy at range, to some extent, I could only manipulate it in my immediate vicinity – pretty much only things I was touching or powers that worked at ultra-close range.

It was a strange ability however, one that made little sense to me: It allowed me to remove energy, including momentum, from anything impacting me, but offensively it was quite different – I could add ambient Qi to an attack, but all it would do was increased penetration and intensity without increasing the actual force or momentum! Meaning that I couldn’t use it to push or knock things over… which flew directly in the face of physics, ignoring everything I remembered about conservation of energy.

We knew that, individually, neither Wulfric nor Tetra stood even a remote chance against me if I used any of my powers against them, let alone manipulated the flow of ambient Qi energy (which is what I assumed it was) to speed myself up and take away the power of their blows: But if they caught me by surprise it was an entirely different matter…

He sent me. We had agreed to meet, finally, sometime before or after the Black Tournament. He wasn’t allowed out without a whole host of guards, but he would be able to give them the slip pretty easily with a few well timed spells.

I sent innocently. He had refused to tell me what he looked like, and after years of trying I was still no closer to getting him to talk. He insisted that it be a surprise, and of course I had returned the favor.

Wolfram replied with a big picture of a middle finger.

I couldn’t help but break out laughing again.

He sent before going offline.

After I had woken up in the infirmary a few years ago and told Wolfram about my near-fatal ‘test’, he had started cursing more than I had heard from him in years. He had been focusing on building up his base, and was just now getting to the good spells… but he didn’t have CP like I did. Neither of us had a clue how close he was to reaching the level where I had gotten blasted, and he was clear in telling me that he had little in the way of defense.

And that was another motivator for me to build my Temporary Regeneration power: To get my best friend through his own ‘test’ without him dying on me. It wouldn't be safe for anone to get close to him, so a constant level of regeneration could make the difference, as long as he didn't die straight away...

As I re-entered my body I heard Tetra and Wulfric quietly chatting. Our fourth roommate, a third year, was quiet as usual. Ever since Wulfric had finally started consistently defeating Master Sylko earlier this year, most of the younger students were too terrified of us to do much more than introduce themselves. And it didn’t help that we hardly knew them, given that we nearly always vanished into one of the secret-passageways we had found scattered throughout Academy. They all eventually lead to the same place – the tunnel I had uncovered in that first year – which was a great help in keeping our hideout hidden for the last four years.

We knew that most of the instructors suspected something, but Master Jaduk never sanctioned an investigation and none of them could ever prove anything. Master Sylko had even moved her living-quarters right next to the storeroom leading to the ancient hallway, but by that time we were already familiar with a half dozen different routes down there. And it’s not like anyone could get past one of my welded iron barricades, at least not unless they spent a few weeks digging around it, which Master Jaduk would never have allowed.

“Good night, Heller, and good luck tomorrow.” Said Tetra. She could always tell when I went offline and back into my body, but she would never tell me how; nor had they asked me about it, likely assuming it was just another part of my training.

“Same to you, Tetra. Good night.”