Chapter 13: Acupuncture Hell and Movements

I couldn’t believe what I just heard her say. ‘Their first child?!’ I thought to myself. The pregnant silence that accompanied that proclamation amid blood and embryonic fluid could have given way to the sound of a pin dropping.

Cuddled in her arms was what looked like a miniature red dragon but with a shorter neck and a few other differences. Slime covered wings curled up along the length of its body and 7 thorn shaped spikes ran along its spine. One could see a hint of teeth as the soccer ball sized creature yawned in its fitful sleep. Having seen it with open eyes at its birth, I recalled the vivid yellow reptilian pupils. As I took in all these details amid the silence, my revelry was broken by a single voice.

“Woohoo, getting busy already! . . .” Shock ran through the ranks, which soon gave way to chuckling and outright laughter which accompanied the anonymous cat caller. Several other whistles could be heard as the wedding guests thronged the new family to offer their congratulations. Though they were all very well dressed, the bloody appearances of the bride and groom did nothing to deter the visitors in their support.

As all of this was happening, due to my close proximity to Monroe at the time, I felt I was the only one to hear him despondently mutter under his breath. “I wanted to call him Thorn.” I guess this was Victoria’s way of getting back at him for teleporting mid-wedding festivities.

As the remainder of the celebration began to gain momentum, Victoria stole a brief moment to return the baby drake to his nest. She had thought to spend the remainder of the evening casting an occasional teleportation to allow the 4 of us, Monroe, Lysis, me, and herself to alternately check in on the sleeping reptile.

I immediately offered to stay with him the whole time since I wasn’t too fond of occasions as big as this, and they gratefully took me up on that offer. As the flash of the teleportation light faded bringing the deeper red light of the cave into focus, I neared the glowing drake nest. Once I reached the sleeping figure of Daenerys, Azure simply jumped out of her hammock to curl up by his side in the warm nest. She then proceeded to lick the drake from head to toe, cleaning the sleeping figure of all his birthing fluids while gaining a tasty snack at the same time. No accounting for taste. Once clean she settled down to nap beside him.

Checking in on them on occasion, I spent the remainder of the evening looking around the cave exploring the few smaller alcoves that existed at the edges of the larger cavern.

Having no way to guess time in the closed off cavern, I guessed several hours had passed before I saw a bright light flash that brought both Monroe and Victoria in its wake. “Jade,” Monroe called out to me upon their arrival. “Thank you for keeping watch over Daenerys. Before I let you go home to get some sleep I just wanted to tell you some things.” He paused for a moment to take a look at his new family member.

“The counsel elders have granted me 2 months of leave from counsel business in which to enjoy my time with Victoria. She and I have decided to go out exploring for the next week and we are taking the little one with us. I was hoping you could keep an eye out for things while we are gone and once we return we will begin your training. Does that work for you?” He asked me.

“Absolutely!” I replied enthusiastically at the fast approaching time for training. A twitch of the lips crossed his face as he watched my excitement. “Very well, if you want to get Azure then we can send you back to the Shop where you can get some sleep.”

With that I carefully gathered up the sleeping form of my own companion and Victoria sent us into the Apothecary shop in a cascade of light. Needless to say, the two of us promptly lay down in bed and passed out for the night.

* * * * *

The very next morning, true to what Monroe had said, neither of them were around. So after preparing breakfast for the 2 of us I decided it was past time to go out into the forest to gather some fresh herbs for the store this week. As the visage of the city faded behind the thickening foliage of the forest, Azure happily jumped about, searching for elusive mice and rabbits to chase after. Though she seemed to be having little luck in either case, I enjoyed watching her antics. I was a bit concerned however, remembering that the mother tiger is the one who teaches her children to hunt.

For now though I didn’t have any way to teach her myself and so I figured I shouldn’t worry about something that I couldn’t do anything about. Maybe when Monroe and Victoria return, one of them might have a way to solve my problem.

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For those seven days I spent my time split up between gathering herbs, dealing with the rare customers at the apothecary shop, and teaching Shaun my refining technique at Kade’s forge. In addition to all of that I spent every day at noon sitting under the waterfall to meditate.

With the added elemental affinity of air, I began practicing with it the first time I arrived at the falls that week. Bringing a gust of wind to bear, I thrust it at the wandering fire slimes who had taken over the area by the cave. With that first gust, I moved a single slime about half a foot away from me whereas I promptly fell back on my rear from the wind’s momentum. “I should have seen that coming.” I muttered to myself.

Again I tried to bring a bunch of wind to bear, this time I braced myself. As I was rocked back a bit in my bracing stance, the victimized slime only moved back about ¾’s of a foot. This was not going to work. Stopping to think, I decided to try something different. What if I braced myself and sent one bit of wind behind me to keep me steady while I sent another in front of me to hit the slime. With that simple attempt I was twisted around and fell to the ground in a heap. Azure dashed a short distance away from me before simply watching impassively as I practiced. She seemed to know it was important that she not yet attack the slimes.

“What am I doing wrong?!” I muttered in frustration. Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I then sat down and closed my eyes. Opening up my senses and extending my soul outward, I once again pulled on the wind to push it in front of me. This time I made sure to make it a gentle wind that only slightly rocked me back. In my mind’s eye and to my extended senses it felt as if I were in water and had just reached behind me with both hands to my side. Then in a swift motion I had brought both my cupped hands forward to push the water out in front of me. Realization dawned on me then. That’s why I couldn’t simply push wind at my back just as I had my front. Only two things could happen, either nothing or I’d create a vortex of sorts.

What if I didn’t use my own body as the thrusting source? Imagining wind at my left side about a meter away, I then concentrated as I thrust it forward and down towards the slime. I was twisted a little to my left as the slime was maybe moved an inch. *sigh* It seems I had quite a bit more experimenting to do.

The second day I went to the falls, I brought Shaun with me to keep the promise of helping him with the consumption of his low quality Fire Stone. Doing the same thing that we did before, it seemed all that happened differently was the duration of the burning and the more rampant 2nd degree burns. Soon enough though, it was taken care of by the burn salve and he had gone home with a newly mixed laxative concoction by which to take with his low quality Earth Stone. I was very surprised to see him at the Forge the very next day. Granted, not once did he sit down.

As I continued to practice the skills of hunting for herbs, manipulating water from the falls, and air among the slimes, my senses slowly became more finely tuned. I was more aware of the flow of air around me due to practicing my spatial awareness, and I had to a degree, found a way to reduce the back flow of pressure on myself. I discovered that if I drew air in at a wider angle away from myself and made it converge in front of me, then I was affected less and the fire slime target in front of me could still be pushed forwards. At that point, I even began practicing with throwing water balls through the air.

Fire was . . . well, let’s just say that fire was a disaster of explosive proportions when I tried throwing it with air. In addition, it obviously showed no effect on the damn Fire Slimes. Until I built up more resistance to fire or gained better control of air, I didn’t intend to throw it around as a raw element on the flow of wind. Sadly because I couldn’t do that safely, the distance I could throw fire was limited to the reach of my soul. Any attempt to go further and it dissipated in an instant. Also I was entirely reliant on pre-existing fire. At this moment, I was able to cast fire about 3 meters from me while still maintaining some of my soul within my body. I was afraid of what might happen if my soul lost complete touch with my body.

By the end of the 7 days of which Monroe and Victoria had been on their ‘Honeymoon’ with Daenerys, under my tutelage Shaun had surprisingly gained Metal affinity and manipulation. To say that he and I were surprised at this was an understatement. Kade too was pleasantly surprised. He said that Metal was a Sub category that could be gained with Fire and Earth affinity combined, but that it was extremely rare. Kade was pleased to have a full time ore refiner on staff and I was glad to not feel guilty about leaving him for the expected training from Monroe upon his return.

* * * * *

It was the morning of the 8th day since the wedding had occurred, and I woke to the sound of both Monroe and Victoria talking excitedly from the open doorway to the dining room. Almost on cue realizing I was awake, Monroe walked in on me as I was getting up for the day. “Jade, it’s good to see you are up. I was just letting Victoria know some of what I planned to do for your training regimen that starts today. You’d better pack up and head on over my manor and be prepared since you’ll be spending most of the day there for the next 7 days.” I had this terrible image in my mind of hellish training but looking at Monroe smiling and laughing happily with his wife, I felt that maybe things would be alright.

After breakfast and packing a lunch for later in the day, I along with Azure, who had taken to walking by my side again after all the wedding visitors had left, made our way to Monroe’s Manor.

As I knocked on his door, the furry butler that I had met before opened the door to me. “Please do come in, Sir Monroe is waiting with his friend in his exercise room.” ‘His friend?’ I thought to myself. Following the man as he led me further into the Manor, I took in the sight of the many beautiful carvings and stone work throughout the massive structure. Stone vines wound across the white walls in intricate designs and wooden panels between rooms depicted several legendary creatures in various arrangements. Azure seemed to look about excitedly as she got to explore this new place with so many new things.

At what seemed to be the back of his home where I was led to, was a largish room with massive padding lain down on it. Mirrors filled the wall opposite of where I stood where one could easily watch their own movements as they practiced. The smaller wall to the left held a myriad of weapons ranging from simple daggers, to bows, staves, axes, and so much more, while the area to the right held practice dummies and colored targets.

This was a humongous setup. Amidst it all, in the back left corner of the room was a large table supporting several strange jars filled with what looked like metal slivers suspended in an oddly colored liquid. ‘What is that for?’ I thought quietly. “Jade!” Monroe called out to me as he had just finished talking to the friend he had with him. Monroe had his regular red and black vest/suit ensemble on while this friend of his wore what I was certain to be mage robes. The robes were predominantly brown with a purple border around the hem. The man in the robes had a thin frame and sharp pointed ears reminiscent of a full blooded elf.

“I’m glad to see you made it so quickly.” He said as I made my way over to him and his robed friend. “I was just talking to Isaac here who is an Earth mage. His area of expertise is actually gravity forces, which he has been gracious enough to let us use in assisting me with your training.”

‘Oh great.’ I thought dejectedly. ‘Another gravity induced lesson to strengthen myself.’ I’d seen far too many of those in other virtual realities where the trainee gets massively strong by the end of it. It certainly was useful but the main downside was the agonizing repetitiveness and terrible straining on your bones. As I thought this, Monroe brought over a largish bowl with a sponge and strong smelling liquid in it. Setting it before me he then spoke up.

“You need to strip down to your underpants and vigorously scrub your entire body down.” ‘Say What!?’ I thought loudly. “Um okay,” I of course meekly said out loud. I guess I had to be glad he didn’t say take off everything. As I stripped down in awkward silence, Monroe began rummaging through the jars at the table and dumped out the liquid from one of the jars into another while straining the contents. I didn’t see what else he did as I was too distracted feeling the middle stages of embarrassment.

Finally with sponge in hand and with only my underpants on, I began scrubbing myself down with the liquid in the bowl that had a terribly sharp smell that stung my nose. Azure had taken a single sniff of that liquid and backed away in a hurry after sneezing several times. At that time Monroe turned back to see how I was doing.

A pensive frown covered his face as he looked at my underpants. “No, those are not going to work. You need something with more skin exposure.” I felt myself turn white at that proclamation. Seeming to not notice my heightened level of embarrassment, Monroe promptly left the room after which he soon returned with what looked like a tight fitting man thong. ‘Oh Hell NO!’ I thought desperately.

Seeing my expression he broke out in a friendly smile. “You don’t need to worry, they are clean.” He said as if that made any difference. “Um, Monroe?” I enquired in a tentative voice. “For what reason do I need to wear that?” I hoped against hope that this was all just a practical joke and that it would not be needed.

Going over to the table he was working at, he picked up something small and thin that he brought over to me. Up close I saw that it was a very thin needle that he held. “I’m going to be using acupuncture in the beginning to train you. Because of that, I need as much surface area to work with to access all the muscles that need manipulation. So hurry up and get changed.” He said matter of factly.

Knowing there was no way out of this I glanced about me to see the mage had casually turned away from me and was not facing the mirror. The butler had long since gone and Monroe was busily messing with the needles at the table. In that moment I hurriedly stripped down bare before putting on the horrid man thong. This was just Wrong in so many ways. I could swear I heard the mage smother a laugh as his shoulders gently shook.

Then I once again went through the arduous task of scrubbing myself down again with the sharp smelling solution. Finally with that all done, Monroe turned back to me holding a rolled up cloth that I guessed to hold several needles. Stopping before me, he motioned Isaac over to us and then lay the bundle on the ground. “Alright, now what we first have to do is help you familiarize yourself with all of your lesser used muscles.” My eyebrows quirked up at that, but I held silent, waiting for him to continue the explanation. “For this to work, I need access to all parts of your body, and you will not be able to touch the ground since you will in effect be completely and totally paralyzed.” Then with a nod to his friend, I began to hear the words of an incantation. Turning to look at Isaac I saw that he also was working with a piece of glowing chalk, much like what Victoria had used in teleportation.

At the close of his incantation, I saw a globe of swirling, brown tinged air encompass me. Then in a single movement, my entire body left the floor. “Whoa!” I cried out as I lost touch with all gravity and hung suspended about a meter above the floor. For a few seconds my arms and legs thrashed around as I unconsciously struggled to find some sort of stability. After the incantation, having calmed down a bit and slowed my movement, I watched as the mage calmly sat down to just watch. “Perfect as always my friend.” Monroe complimented him. “Now it is time for my work.” He said as he pulled out several needles. Standing before me in my suspended state, it was like I was seeing him through a light brownish haze that did little to obscure details.

“Now Jade, it is extremely important that you follow my instructions explicitly.” I nodded my head in the affirmative. “The purpose of this exercise is to help you become aware of almost every muscle in your body that you control and teach you to become aware of what they do. In order to accomplish this, I will place needles in every single muscle that provides voluntary movement from your shoulders on down. You’ll still be able to freely swallow, talk, breath, and move your head, but every single other movement that you attempt to make will cause terrible pain. “Oh great.” I said in breathless fear. “It actually is great,” he said. “Because this way, each time I remove a needle to allow you movement of a single muscle, then your body will be that much more determined to learn.”

With that he began placing countless needles into my muscles. As best I could, I forced myself to relax, but several times throughout the process I had a twitch that would cause shooting pain to originate from the point of movement. That pain of course would cause me to twitch even more, which caused a cascade effect of increasing pain. Whenever that happened, Monroe would simply stand back and wait for me to get myself under control before resuming his work. This was true torture.

In attempt to distract myself from the process, I started up conversation with the Mage. “Isaac,” I rasped out. Looking up at me from his sitting position, he showed that I had his full attention. “What do the colors of the robes mean?” I asked him.

“Oh, I guess no one has told you yet?” I shook my head a little which must have somehow caused me to move a muscle farther down which created a wave of pain. Getting that under control again, I just croaked out “No.”

A bemused and sympathetic expression filled his face. Then he began to speak. “There are two areas for colors. The main body of the robes, of which mine is brown, tells what your dominant affinity is. The affinities and colors are as follows.

Brown=Earth

White=Holy or light

Black=Dark

Red=Fire

Grey=Wind

Blue=Water

Yellow=Electricity or Energy

There are several other sub categories that others have made their dominant one, but there are too many to list.

As for the other color, the one on the hem of our robes, that speaks of what level of Stone assimilation you are at.

I have assimilated a Superior quality Earth Stone which took me a very long time to work up to.

The colors for stones assimilation are as follows.

Having assimilated a simple Mage Stone=White

Poor quality elemental=yellow

Low quality elemental=orange

Average quality elemental=Green

Good quality elemental=blue

Superior quality elemental=Purple

Exquisite quality elemental=Brown

Perfect quality elemental=Red

And there is a rumored existence of a Godly quality elemental which would be Black if it truly does exist.”

As Isaac had answered my question, I had been blissfully unaware and distracted from the many needles being poked into me. Now that he was done talking I realized that Monroe was done. Now I lay suspended in the bubble of anti-gravity ever so slowly turning with the latest external momentum.

“Alright, now you are ready.” Monroe spoke up in satisfaction. “You will remain suspended in this position for the next 6 hours in order to learn how to calm your mind and refrain from making any movements.” My eyes widened at that. I would have screamed a good deal more at him except I didn’t want to feel the accompanying pain from miscellaneous lower body movement. “Oh and you did remember to go to the bathroom before coming right?” He asked with a concerned look. Waving away my startled expression, he kept talking. “It’s no matter. Isaac here will remain vigil and summon me if anything goes wrong. In any case, I’m going off to see my wife and go play with . . . I mean feed Daenerys. You know how baby drakes can get hungry?”

Azure who had been mesmerized by my slowly rotating and floating body had perked up at the mention of the Fire Drake. Though when she saw that Monroe was leaving while I was staying, she faithfully stayed with me in my suspended agony. Such a good friend. I thought with extreme gratitude. Too bad she couldn’t experience the same damn thing.

Closing my eyes and letting out a breath to calm my growing nerves I thought about what I could do to make the full 6 hours pass quickly. From my ever changing angle, I barely caught a glimpse of Isaac before his body passed out of my field of vision. He seemed to be in a stage of meditation entirely ready for the long haul of watching over me. *Sigh* “Uggghhhhh!” The pain scored through me again.

As seconds and minutes passed by, giving me no real room for knowing what time it was, I watched as Azure slowly grew bored of my slowly turning body and so she had begun playing with her reflection in the mirror on the far wall. Mock pouncing at her reflected adversary while I tried not to laugh at her antics. After a moderate amount of time she returned to my side in which she observed me a little longer. Then after casting a long glance at me as if waiting for my field of vision to leave, I waited for my body to continue its continuous slow spin. As she came back into view she was happily chewing on some of the meat that she had managed to steal from my pack. ‘Damn you! You Insensitive Cat!’ I thought. ‘Maybe you aren’t so different from those conceited house pets!’ She had her back to me so that she could not enjoy the fury of my glare.

I did another quiet sigh. This time with no movement. Could I really blame her? She couldn’t really do anything to help me in my current position anyways. “Azure,” I called out to her in a raspy voice. She turned to face me more fully with what I could have sworn was a look of commiseration. “It’s okay, at least one of us gets to eat.” I said with a smile. At that she quickly finished eating her raw meat and sat down to gaze steadily at me with what I felt to be sympathy.

After what felt like a couple of hours, her eyes seemed to glaze over and she had fallen asleep watching over me. Now I had no audience. Granted, considering what I was wearing and how helpless I was, it was a bit of a mixed blessing. As the silence and solitude began to fill me with complete and utter boredom, I began to let my thoughts wander. Every once in a while, I would still make an involuntary twitch which would then bring about a rush of pain that I struggled to keep quiet. But I had slowly begun to learn to reflexively relax rather than tense up at the pain.

With my random thoughts running through my head, I decided to try something. It was something of which I’d never had an opportunity to try in this world before. In Real Life I knew that there was a difference in the effort I had to make in order to summon the feelings of warmth and chills in regards to when I could move verses when I sought to make no movement. In Real Life, when I remained absolutely still, it was several times more difficult to reach for the feeling of empowering warmth and chills. But I decided that now was a good time to try it out here and see if anything good came of it.

Closing my eyes, I began to search around in the darkened reaches of my soul. I could feel it, the energy laying there just on the horizon, just out of reach. All I would have to do was make a little physical movement to assist with the effort, and it would be within my grasp. But this I could not do. An uncontrolled yawn overtook me, causing me to focus purely on keeping my other muscles relaxed. Oh thank the heavens that no pain came. Soon enough though another yawn struck me which I had again forced myself to keep relaxed. That was the downside of this exercise. Anytime I reached outward towards my soul when remaining still, I was struck by a strong desire to yawn.

Finally I had gotten my breathing under relative control and began again with my motionless reaching. . . . .

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. . . . .

Simply laying there in the darkness and mentally reaching outward did nothing for me. Trying to bring to mind a song or two that I felt empowered when listening to, I felt a brief caress of my soul’s energy, as it momentarily touched me before slipping away out of my motionless grasp. . . .For that brief moment it worked . . . Again, I thought more deeply upon the music, drawing out my deeper emotions of wanting to be more than I currently was. . . .

A light cascade of soul energy rushed through me bringing with it another fit of dangerous yawning. . . . . After about 5 uncontrolled yawns, I clenched my jaw at any further attempts on the part of my body to distract me. That was insanely hard to do while not using any of the muscles below my neck.

As I once again reached into my soul, I thought of what kind of feelings that song I imagined instilled within me . . . . “What do I really want in life?” I whispered. . . . “What do I really want to accomplish?” . . . ‘Who can I really become?’ I then thought silently. . . . ‘Who?’. . . ‘Who can I be?’ . . . . . . . then a last thought as if pulled from the very depths of my soul. . . . ‘Who can I save?’ . . . With that last thought a rush of energy pulsed deep within me sending out a rush of emotions and soul power.

I felt the very confines of the spell that help me in place shiver at the touch of my energy. Opening up my eyes at that sensation, I caught look at Isaac as his eyes shot open in surprise and panic. Glancing upward at me in alarm, he quickly began uttering an incantation which soon brought stillness again to the antigravity spell.

Looking at me with something akin to awe, he spoke. “What on Earth did you do?” I swallowed a bit of saliva that was beginning to form in abundance in my suddenly dry mouth. “Um, I was meditating.” I managed to answer somewhat skeptically. I hoped I had a good poker face because I really didn’t have a good answer. “What . . ., ugh . . ., never mind.” He said. “I do want to talk with you later though when this is done.”

‘Great.’ I thought somewhat despondently to myself. Now I was going to have to play ignorant and let him try to figure me out. As I now had nothing to really do besides think, now that practicing my soul energy was out of the question since it seemed to destabilize his spell, I had a lot of time to ponder my next move.

Since I was finally in the beginning stages with learning from Monroe on how to fight (I hope), then what else is there for me to do in this city? I still needed to gain electricity or energy affinity, and I felt that anything less than a lightning strike would require the assistance of the mage guild. I really would prefer that they not find out about my ability. But I’d more so prefer not to end up as a crispy lightening rod.

Besides that, I really needed to find a way to teach Azure how to properly hunt and fight. Was there a fighter in the fighter’s guild that used beast like movements that I could convince to teach her? Or would I have to figure it out for myself?

Several other things ran through my mind, and at long last, it seemed the 6 hours was up, as Monroe came in the room, whistling happily. ‘Jerk.’ I thought peevishly at him. “So, how’d he do?” Monroe asked Isaac.

Isaac looked pointedly at me. “He did very well, gained control over his calm center rather quickly.” Interestingly, he didn’t mention anything about my disrupting his spell.

“That is very good!” Exclaimed Monroe. “That means we can start in on singling out your weak muscles tomorrow.” With practiced motions he pulled out all of the needles before dropping them in that eye-watering solution. Then with a wave of his hand, Isaac dispelled the anti-gravity field. I was barely able to catch myself, okay, to be honest, I didn’t catch myself. I fell into an embarrassing heap of horribly exposed limbs.

As I contemplated taking off the man thong to put on my underpants, Monroe answered my question. “Just keep it, since you’ll be needing it for quite a while with our training.” ‘Ugh!’ I thought with disgust. I guess that answered my question. I just pulled on my regular underpants over them and then donned the rest of my clothes. After stretching out my seemingly atrophied muscles, I beat a hasty retreat with Azure right behind me.

Stepping out from the confines of Monroes Manor I came face to face with Isaac. “Oh. . . Uh . . . hey. Thanks for helping out with your gravity magic.” I said. “Not a problem, always glad to help out Monroe.” Isaac replied. “So I was meaning to ask, how did you manage to destabilize and almost shatter my anti-gravity spell?” He enquired.

During my time thinking while suspended I had been given plenty of time to plan out my answer. “Is that what happened?!” I asked in wide eyed shock. Isaac’s eyes crinkled in thought. “Yes, and with your permission, I’d like to try and repeat the circumstances to see how you did it if possible.” ‘hmmm this I could work with’ I thought.

“Sure, whatever you need. I’m curious too to find out how my meditating could do such a thing.” I answered openly. “Great! Since we’ve got a few hours of daylight left, then would you be willing to come to the mages guild with me?” He asked in excitement.

Awe crud, all I wanted at the moment was to get changed out of the horrible thong that was riding up into the crack of extreme discomfort. “Sure, as long as there is a room that I can get changed in.” I replied. A not so small twitch of his lips accompanied my request. “Absolutely! We’ll get right to that.” He said as he led me in the thankfully short distance to the mages guild.

Shortly after I was changed into my proper attire I was led by Isaac into a smallish office with a brown tone to it. “As a superior rank elementalist, I qualify for my own work space in my home guild.” He commented at my unspoken question. ‘That actually was kind of cool that he had his own space.’ I thought to myself.

“Now let’s go about repeating the same circumstances.” He said. Soon enough, after a modest length chant and a drawn sigil in the air, I was floating around suspended in the air amidst the anti-gravity spell. No way did I want him to see me at my full exertion of soul energy and so I acted like I had entered a normal state of meditation. After what I guessed to be 20 minutes or so and going through various facial expressions ranging from extreme constipation to serene calm, I finally exerted the minutest bit of soul energy which caused a minor shift in the containing sphere.

Opening my eyes in feigned surprise, I looked about me as he reinforced his anti-gravity spell. After he had stabilized it, he slowly let me back down to the ground and then released it. “Wow!” He exclaimed. “That is incredible! Do you know how you did that?” He asked me. I shook my head in the negative. I mean sure I knew that reaching out with my soul power destabilized his magic, but I didn’t understand the whole magic or science behind WHY it destabilized it.

“I would love to study this further if that is alright with you?” He enquired. With a shrug of my shoulders I answered him. “Sure. Sure but can I ask for something in return?” Lightly raising his eyebrows he waved out his hand. “What would you like?” He asked me.

“I’ve been trying to gain the start of elemental resistances and I’m wanting to get energy resistance because I know some creatures have energy attacks. Is there anything that you can do to help me with that?” I asked him. “Hmm. . . . Actually, I think there is something we can do.” He replied. “Since you can’t really die permanently as a Traveler, then we could put some of the newer students who have chosen Energy as their element to practice on you. Would that work?”

“That would be perfect!” I exclaimed. “By the way, do you have any magic?” He asked me. . . . I twisted my hands a bit before answering. “I uh actually have consumed a low quality earth stone.” I figured considering the amount of poor quality I had eaten, that it should qualify as Low quality at the least. “Oh, excellent, how would you like to learn the theory behind gravity magic?” He asked me. Then he continued on. “I know you won’t be able to master it at your level, but you could prepare for when you have the proper level of affinity and control. What do you think?”

That actually sounded like an interesting idea. Though I fully intended to practice his ‘theory’ without the further consumption of Earth Stones. Just not in his view. “I would love to learn that. Thank you!” I said to him.

“Well, I see that our conversation has brought us closer to the evening, so why don’t we call it a night and I’ll see you tomorrow at Monroe’s?” “Till tomorrow.” I agreed. With that I left the Mages Guild and went straight back to the Apothecary shop.

Azure and I had a quick dinner during which Victoria was whistling a happy tune before we all went to bed.

* * * * *

Logging out as usual at nights I let out a sigh of relief as I stepped out of the capsule. After that entire ordeal of staying still the whole time in game, I was entirely grateful for the opportunity to go swimming and stretch out in Real Life. After my regular hour of swimming, a quick meal, and some checking up on my e-mail and messages, I found nothing of interest. So returning to the capsule I reentered and enjoyed the last few hours of In Game sleep before the morning,

* * * * *

Once again back at Monroe’s house in that ridiculous man thong and twisting about suspended above the floor, I patiently waited for him to place all the acupuncture needles in the appropriate places. As Monroe completed that task, he then spoke to me again.

“Now that you have become used to relaxing your body during painful situations, it is time to teach you to learn about individual muscles and find out how to trigger them.” Grabbing hold of a single needle in my upper arm he simply pulled it out. “Now I want you to find out what muscle it is that I just freed, and you need to be able to make it contract without the use of any other muscles.” ‘What the . . .! Wow this is going to take a long time.’ I thought to myself.

Sure enough it took 8 hours that day for me to find and painlessly trigger 8 different muscles a total of 5 times each pain free. The hardest part was trying to differentiate them from the surrounding accessory muscles in order to use them. Countless times I felt the horrible pain of improperly triggered muscles. After going through what I experienced yesterday, I learned that I was at 90% pain experience level. So I knew I was close to real life here.

Following the acupuncture session that day, I once again met up with Isaac afterwards and went to the mages guild. He already had 4 initiate mages with solid yellow robes on to help me with my energy resistance. Azure too had opted to experience the pain of electrical shocks. To best explain it, it ranged from feeling like a simple electrostatic discharge you might expect from a helium balloon when you rub it against your hair and then touch another object to a biting shock from touching an improperly grounded electrical outlet. I could feel Azure unhappily jerk each time we felt the later end of those shocks. ‘Poor girl.’ I thought sadly.

During that first session, Isaac had stayed to watch the whole thing, and so I refrained from reaching out with my soul energy to touch upon the electrical discharges. Soon after discharging all of their manna, the initiates retired to their other studies. With occasional twitches from over excited muscles, Azure and I made our way to Isaac’s office where he pulled out a book on gravity magic. Reading the preface, it read as follows.

*To those who seek to master the powers of the earth, there can be no greater power than the force of gravity. For those that that can learn to manipulate the very forces of weight and weightlessness will then have power to bind their enemies to the ground and even render their attacks negligible. . .*

As I read through the book, it described several different uses of gravity and gave a few in detail drawing examples of sigils that once drawn perfectly and activated could induce an increased gravity well, but it didn’t say how it was accomplished in regards to practical reasoning. Since the day was once again coming to a close, I headed home in anticipation for the next day.

*

Day 3 of the Gravity/Acupuncture training and after going back over the previous 8 muscle movements I was able to master an additional 8 in the 6 hours that I had remained of the training session.

Again at the mages guild Azure and I suffered the “energetic” attentions of the energy mages as they bombarded us with electrical shocks. I honestly think they were getting better at it since they had real person to practice on. Damn those jolts hurt! Sadly Isaac again watched the entire performance while Azure and I suffered. So still no Soul energy. He did however have me try to break out of his anti-gravity field this time. I purposely gave no more soul energy out this time than I had the time before. I wanted to make him think that this was all I could do in regards to disrupting his field.

Honestly, Isaac was a nice guy and I hated deceiving him, but I didn’t want knowledge of my ability to become widespread since even I had yet to discover everything about it. I didn’t want someone discovering an efficient way of countering it which could lead to my death in the future. The other thing is I didn’t want to become a lab rat where others just sought to see how far I could go before breaking down. I didn’t go over any gravity lessons for today though with his testing of my “meditation” skills.

*

Day 4 of Gravity/Acupuncture training. After going through all 16 of the previous 2 days of muscle movements I was able to complete an additional 10 in the remaining 5 hours. Maybe he was switching to easier muscles, or maybe I was getting the hang of it. At the end of today’s muscle movement lesson, Monroe told me that tomorrow would be the last time he would test me in the anti-gravity field. I was totally thrilled at that.

At the mages guild, Azure and I finally had a session with the energy mages without Isaac being present. I wisely asked that they use their absolutely weakest attacks for today as I reached out with my soul energy to engulf the static shocks that emanated from their hands. ‘Those things hurt!’ Though I’ve never had the opportunity to be shocked with an AED before. You know, those electrical paddles they shock your chest with to reset your heart rhythm? But I’m sure this is what it would feel like. My soul energy seemed to enhance every aspect of those hundreds of minute static shocks multiplied many times over.

I was barely able to walk after that with my jerking limbs, for which Isaac gave a yelling to the guys that didn’t even know what they had done wrong. I felt bad for them, but even worse for myself and Azure. To keep the shocks from killing Azure, I had to keep feeding her a constant flow of healing energy even as I continued to feel jolts of pain. Needless to say, we didn’t have a gravity lesson that day.

*

Day 5 Gravity/Acupuncture training. I had thought that after going back over all of the previous muscle movements the same number of times before, I’d be done. I was very wrong. He kept pulling out one needle here and inserting another needle there telling me to quickly find the muscle that he had freed up and to trigger it. Finally with an hour to go before his time with me was up, I managed to go for 3 cycles of getting his randomized pattern right without a single hitch in pain.

Once I arrived at the mages guild, only a single energy student was there to help me. He said that he had researched a very low level energy output skill that would hopefully not hurt me. As Isaac was there to watch to make sure things didn’t get out of hand today, I didn’t use my soul energy. Without that, this was much too simple that I had a hard time staying awake with the minor steady flow of a prickle like sensation. The student said something about this spell being used in fine tuning of small gadgets.

I actually felt like I had hit the jackpot today with the instruction booklet that Isaac gave me on gravity. It went into depth with how gravity fields worked. It spoke as follows.

*Gravity fields are just that, fields. They are an invisible, incorporeal force that can affect any material object. Much like a compass is used to determine magnetic north so too is gravity used to determine what is down. If an individual is able to understand and replicate what creates gravity then soon after will come the ability to affect its influence on a broader scale.*

At first, what it said confused me when mentioning being able to use gravity on a broader scale as compared to just creating it. How does one simply, create gravity? In any case, it was time to go home.

*

Deciding I wanted to try something out, I got up at before the break of dawn to run to the falls. Choosing an area far out of reach of the Kraken, which I could see from a distance toying with the Fire slimes since it was still dark out and their red illumination was distorted every once in a while by a black tentacle that snatched on and pulled it into the flowing river. With a shudder at the thought of being down there when dark, I began practicing my theory I had researched on the computer last night. Gravity was said to be the result of mass and size. Apparently when you combine those two things in a great enough amount, then you create a gravity field.

With that in mind, I found a relatively open area in which I reached down with my bare hands and began mentally compressing as large of an area as I could manage into a single hard ball of dirt and stone. Bearing down harder and harder till both my mental and physical muscles screamed in agony I finally ceased my actions. With a mental probe into the ground beneath me, I felt a 3 diameter compressed sphere starting a couple of inches beneath my fingers. The dirt and stone surrounding the area of the ball was broken and sinking into the ground. Closing my eyes I then stretched out my soul to sense the flow in the air around me. Nothing seemed to be happening differently.

I then moved to the edge of the sphere and tried again. When comparing the air above the sphere to the air further away, I thought I felt I very minute difference in . . . something. But I couldn’t say what. Finally I picked up a handful of granulized dirt and carefully poured them both out of my hands at the same time, trying to follow the minutest of flows with my soul. There! On my left where the sphere was. I felt the tiniest of flows that went towards the sphere rather than a direct path straight down. If I hadn’t been focusing so hard, then I wouldn’t have noticed it.

*ting*

Gravity force: (Rare) Through the use of your soul, intellect, and your Earth manipulation ability, you have gained an understanding of how the forces of gravity work. Through the manipulation of preexisting gravity fields you can now begin increasing and decreasing their effect on the world around you.

“Sweet!” At that realization, I did my best to smooth out the ground that I’d compressed, to make it look more natural, and then I rushed back to the city to get there before Victoria woke up.

At Monroe’s Manor again, I can in to find Monroe waiting once more with the Acupuncture needles. “Wait! I thought we were done with those.” I cried out. “Whatever made you think that?” He asked me. “You said no more anti-gravity field and I thought that also meant no more needles.”

With a small laugh he shook his head. “Nope, now we work with increased gravity.” I still had to wear that abominable thong and this time I stood still as Monroe placed several needles into my legs, abdomen, back, and chest area. I did have the chance to notice that he didn’t place nearly as many needles in this time as other times. Then turning to face Isaac, Monroe spoke up. “If you wouldn’t mind engaging the gravity field then that we are ready.” With a nod, Isaac drew a different symbol and muttered an incantation after which I was almost suddenly yanked towards the ground. “UUUUUGGGGHHHHH!” I cried out in pain from using needle locked legs to remain standing. I was surprised to notice though that Monroe had braced my arms to keep me from falling to the ground.

As I slowly began using the unlocked muscles to stand more firmly against the higher level of gravity, Monroe slowly released his supporting grip on me. It was from that day forward that he began standing in different ways. Some positions looked to be used in preparing for a kick, punch, or throw, while others looked to be like they were used in defending against various attacks. After showing me and having me duplicate his stance, he would tell me the stance number.

Most of my time was spent learning how to move from stance to stance without any pain. At the end of all of those stances, those muscles that he had me use, were screaming in agony not from the use of needles but from the overexertion of them in a gravity field and with few to no support muscles.

Once again, though I strongly deliberated about not going to the mage guild this time and opt for sleep instead, I was standing before the single energy mage without the attention of Isaac. As the single mage began using the finite electrical charge, I reached out with my soul energy to try to sense and gather up the sparking energy. It still hurt, but not nearly as much as it had 2 days ago when I’d used my soul energy resulting in an unnecessary defibrillation of my heart.

Recalling what I knew from how electricity worked, I tried guiding the various charges that were aimed at my skin, down into the ground at my feet. After many unsuccessful tries, I finally managed to coax a single electrical discharge to travel up my arm from the point of shocking contact, down my side and my leg to the ground where it was promptly absorbed by the wood.

*ting*

Electricity Affinity/Resistance/Manipulation: (Uncommon) Through the use of your soul in guiding and transferring of electrical impulses not originating from your body, you have gained the ability to create, store, and transfer energy within and around your body. Electrical attacks will have a slightly reduced effect on you.

“Yes!” I cried out. In shock the mage that was shocking me stepped back. “Um what just happened?” He asked me. “Oh.” I muttered in brief embarrassment. “I just gained Electrical resistance.” I said. “Alright.” Was all he said. “Do you need me anymore than?” He asked. I happily shook my head and thanked him for his help. With that, I went straight home without getting any more lessons on gravity.

* * * * *

Current time in game about 9:30 pm of the 2nd of November. Day 63 in game time. Last day at 90% pain level. Real Life June 8th about 7:10 am.

* * * * *

Again I stayed up much too late. Haha I really need to fix my sleep schedule. Please since I’m too tired to go through and do an editing session, please let me know if I made any mistakes. Thanks a bunch. Also thank you all for showing your appreciation. It is much appreciated. haha See how tired I am that I can’t think of anything else to say. Anyways. Have a good day/night. :)

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