Chapter 78

Lykan

Core Training

Breath after breath came in and filled Lykan. No longer did he feel pangs of hunger, or thirst. Instead with each breath he felt a little more satiated, a little more quenched until he exhaled. Once he exhaled, he felt the pangs of hunger and thirst almost immediately, but any attempts to pull out food or drink were met with the glowing red eyes of the monstrous titan staring him down. Any attempts to leave were met with the door disappearing. No, disappearing wasn’t the correct term, melding. The door melded into the wall creating one continuous sheet of metal that encapsulated the round room.

Lykan could of course try to break free, but he felt the defense mechanisms that were in place would likely come to life. Despite feeling trapped, he couldn’t help but feel that he was growing stronger.

After the first few hours of training, he blindly accepted everything. He entered states of meditation where his body and mind could relax, but not completely. It was clear the moment he fell asleep in such cases as that is when his breathing would revert to normal, and he would awaken with hunger pains almost immediately. If he tried to fall asleep on the floor, or in a pose that was not a meditation pose he would be zapped awake. Either the floor would become incredibly hot, or a beam of electricity from the master would zap and fully awake him.

For days he kept up the tortuous training. Breathing in Qi and out hunger. He knew he was doing something wrong, as the master wouldn’t let him move onto the next stage. After a thousand steps with Qi being drawn in every step, he had to do ten thousand jogging paces with Qi. Then from there he had to do push-ups, they were supposed to be tentacle ups. The tentacles around the face of the master were what was being demonstrated, but they finally let him get by with just using his arms. The only difference between these pushups and regular ones was the use of Qi. Qi was to come in on the way up and empty air was to be released on the way down.

Slowly over time breathing in Qi became second nature. Even when he failed to breath Qi in properly and had to restart, the act of repeating wasn’t a problem. The only real problem came from knowing he had gotten so far only to fail.

Being underground, without any sign of the sun to help keep track of time or days things began to blur. At first Lykan was running on fumes, constantly pushing himself. It wasn’t until much later that he found that he no longer had to use the restroom. He had been so dehydrated to begin with that not needing to relieve himself wasn’t too shocking. But it seemed that even what waste had been accumulating within his body had been removed or likely reused. He could feel the Qi flowing through his body now, making a quick trip around his meridians where it grabbed up impurities before burning them away on the way to his new Base Core.

The entire process seemed long and cumbersome. When he started there were a lot of dark spots of corrosion that the Qi would wear away. In a way these dark spots within his body reminded him of dried grease for gear parts. When mechanical engines were allowed to sit for too long the grease that had been used to let the gears and pistons flow easily tended to leak out. Of course, the standard repair process was to cover the gears with more grease so they could work properly later on.

Seeing the inside of his body, or rather feeling the Qi flow through his body let him realize that he seemed to have been doing much the same. For years he had lived a life where his body was able to keep up with the trials and stresses of life, but recently that wasn’t the case.

The last year had been a humbling experience. For years he had been well ahead of his peers in almost all aspects of life, but recently he had realized he was weak. For the first time in his life, he felt inadequate to the tasks and challenges of life. For a moment he had been resentful to the gods for once again making it, so he was a null with their cursed blessing.

Only now with his sleep deprived mind latching onto anything to keep him awake long enough to continue his training did things start to make sense. At least they made sense in that way a sleep deprived mind could understand, knowing that should he awoken, he would likely find most of his conclusions lacking substance. Still for the moment he felt like he was onto something. With each breath a piece of plague was chipped away from his meridians and with each breath he also felt that he realized more about himself.

He had missed so many people in his life, so many relationships cut short and for what? He thought he was in love with Octavia, but he was young and clearly misjudged the situation. She didn’t care for him. With that came guilt from the way he disregarded other relationships, cutting many short that could have been more.

His moments of reflection also allowed him to realize other ideals that should have been made apparent. Namely his treatment at the hands of the Sidherthan, a country he had given so much for. He was valued and applauded so long as he could still provide for them. He had been blinded by the bountiful harvests and treasures that were offered by the people of the land.

He focused on these emotions in particular, these emotions were raw and painful. He used that pain to help fuel anger, anger helped him focus long enough to stay awake to focus. But eventually the anger subsided, and he was left with nothing more than his own stubborn willpower and the threat of pain to help keep him going.

Yet, he felt his mind able to process and move on from the events faster this way. Through forced meditation he had to conquer his own personal demons faster. What would have likely been bottled up for years before erupting violently was now being dealt with over the course of long hours. He wasn’t over the events of the last few years, and likely never would truly. But he felt they were no longer raw. Instead, they were lessons to learn and grow from.

He eventually felt there was a rhythm to the events around him. With each memory that was dealt with and processed, so too was a piece of plaque from his meridians. Each time he accepted his failures, so too would the plaque dissipate. It was a cathartic process.

Finally, there was a time when there was nothing else to do. There were no more painful memories that Lykan could use to focus on. Nor were there any more corrosive flakes that could be torn away and cleansed from his system. With everything finally cleansed, his counter that had been counting his push-ups vanished.

Lykan was confused and looked up to see his instructor, the tentacle-faced Titan standing. Not only was he now standing, but with one humanoid hand he gestured for Lykan to stand as well.

There was a moment of confusion before Lykan arose to his feet and stared at his master.

Without even realizing it, his own body perfectly mirrored the stance of his master, minus the placement of the face tentacles. Now that they were both standing it was clear that the Titans, or at least the Titan that was chosen to be his trainer was much taller than the average human. Lykan himself was tall but found that he was at least half a meter shorter than the hulking behemoth before him. Also looking at the alien creature it was clear that the beast was well muscled. Whether this was indicative of all Titans, or just the one who was chosen to be his instructor was unclear. What was clear was that one Titan could easily handle multiple humans all at once.

Looking at the thick black nature of the skin that covered the being, it was clear that swords and likely even bullets would have a hard time piercing such a frame. Lykan had to admit he was impressed by the being before him and could easily understand how the word Titan was used to describe such a race of beings. If these were in fact what the gods had fought against, then there was little doubt that much of the world would have trembled from such conflicts.

Looking at the simulacrum of a being before him, it was also clear that humanity as it currently stood had no chance against such foes. In fact, Lykan thought that had this being before him was a true Titan, versus a simulacrum that reacted to his use of Qi, he knew he would be dead. As it was, this seemed to be a perfect scenario of events that led to this point.

Had he not been a null through the cursed blessing from the gods he might not have been able to experience this moment. This training was invaluable, not only did he feel stronger from it, but he felt he could still grow immeasurably more powerful from this training.

There was also the thought, or rather faintest hope that if he did well enough here, he could eventually find a way to have his curse removed. That one day he might be able to wield both Qi and Mana. Clearly the two didn’t mix, but there were ways they could. When in solid forms the two could be forced together to form something greater. That much was proven by Nayali and her attack that nearly killed him.

There were ways the two energies could be merged, and while he had a strong understanding of mana. He knew that his understanding of Qi was rudimentary at best. This thought and more filled his mind as he gave a mental thanks to the gods who had somehow guided him down this long-convoluted path. Before he could get too far down this train of thought the instructor began to move.

“Can you see me now. This is a basic invisibility technique where one circulates Qi throughout their body without fully absorbing it. The adept must then circulate the Qi within their body at the same rate and speed of the energy of their surroundings.”

The Titan instructor said in a weird liquid language that sounded like it was coming from under water.

Fortunately for Lykan his Universal Linguist skill seemed to be able to understand the alien language and allow his mind to process the thoughts as they were meant to be conveyed. There was a brief moment where he wondered if there was a bit of mind linking that came from this skill. He had often had similar thoughts, and doubly so after hearing of Nayali’s newly identified psychic linking skills. Before Lykan’s sleep deprived mind had too much of a chance to get distracted by this chain of thoughts, the instructor continued the lesson.

“Now observe.” The Titan instructor said, making sure to highlight the Qi that was surrounding him, which he then began to breath in. As the Qi entered his tentacle-like nostrils the particles of energy remain lit as they began to first circulate throughout his meridians slowly. Then as more and more particles came, the need to accelerate their speed throughout its body became clear as the tendency was for the Qi to merge. Once they merged their gravity, for lack of a better term, increased and pulled them towards the core. So rather than letting the particles merge, the idea was to circulate the particles quickly throughout the body.

This part was easy to comprehend, though Lykan realized that this would be slightly hard to mimic. At least it would have been hard if he didn’t already have a Focus and Meditation both at the (Maximum) rating. Having already done something like this for flight, he thought doing so for Qi would be fairly easy to do. At least to the part that he had been witnessing thus far.

There was a long pause where the instructor stared with increasingly more impatience at Lykan.

Lykan for his part didn’t understand at first, until the realization dawned on him. The instructor wanted Lykan to copy him. With the glaring encouragement and threat of physical violence Lykan nodded and began doing much the same with his own Qi that he was still breathing in.

In seconds he began circulating the Qi faster and faster throughout his body. This was tougher than he originally thought and caused him to stare at his outstretched hands a lot. This might seem stupid, but this was really the only way he could keep track of how fast his Qi was circulating throughout his body. Just as he was beginning to get the Qi flowing at an acceptable level, he felt something begin to crack and shatter.

Pain.

He felt what amounted to shards of glass breaking apart into his body. Then in a second all the Qi that had been circulating rapidly around his body began to be sucked to the center of his body. There was pain as all the energy slammed into his core, compacting the energy that had already been there. Rather than building into a larger ball, the energy seemed to condense even tighter. Lykan imagined this was the process that happened to diamonds, though much worse as this was happening to his body. He focused on the pain, trying to both control the flow of energy and to help ignore the pain coursing through him.

Finally, after long minutes Lykan opened his eyes to see that he had fallen to the floor at some point. He was about to ask what happened, when a message from the gods appeared in his mind.

Blessing Bestowed: Basic Circulation Core.

Basic Circulation Core. You have managed to strengthen your core to follow the path of circulation. With a circulation core many power abilities will be possible to you, at the cost of losing some higher end strength-based abilities. The energy stored here is permanently in use to improve your body. This core can be improved upon to receive greater results. Results: +1 Strength, +2 Mobility, +1 Power.

There was a lot to unpack in that message. First there were multiple paths to evolve a core. He knew that core evolution was possible. The description of his Base Core, and this core seemed to state that there were still more ways to improve and evolve the core.

In a way this reminded Lykan somewhat of the ways Magi would evolve their training to focus on aspects of magic. Some focused primarily on wielding and controlling fire, while others focused on creating rains for plants. Still others focused on healing. The thought of healing let his mind drift to Telka, and how he had thoroughly broken that relationship.

“You have had a breakthrough to a new core evolution. Now you must solidify your foundation before we can proceed with your training.” The Titan said, as he began to lower himself to the ground.

Before Lykan could begin to ask what that meant a new training message appeared before his eyes that caused him to shutter involuntarily.

Assume the meditation pose.

Lykan immediately dropped to a pose similar to the one used by his instructor. Once he was in position the next dreaded message appeared.

Breath in Qi.

Lykan did and thus prompted the next message that was all too familiar to Lykan. A message that Lykan attributed to messing up and starting over.

Breaths completed 1 of 100.

It was only a hundred breaths, something that was easy and somewhat trivial at this point. But still, the act of having to start over from the basics still wracked his mind. But in a way he attributed this to getting stronger. He wanted to check out his status for motivation but realized that was a bad precedent. He closed off his mind and began to focus.

In a way he felt free. Even though he was bound to this room, to continue training by some sick sadistic method that somehow negated the need for food or water, he felt free. For the first time in years, he had no obligations. Nothing bound him to another person, place, or commitment. Instead, all he had was his own need to improve and eventually leave the training chamber.

Part of his mind realized that he was technically, if not actually a prisoner of this room. But rather than a prisoner where the most valuable currency of life was being wasted, that currency being both time and potential. Lykan realized that his position was unique, he was unageing, which effectively made him immortal. When it came to the idea of potential, he had received more growth recently from this training than he had over his last six months of service to the Sidherthan military. In all it could be argued that he was in a perfect environment to grow and learn.

Relieved that he was finally feeling like himself again, or at least the version of him that was unburdened by responsibilities to others. He focused on his training making a note to ask for forgiveness to those he might have slighted, while ignoring those who brought him pain.

With his newfound resolution to life. He couldn’t help but feel a closer connection to his very core. From all his breaths he realized why he had been granted to obscure class of Wanderer. In his heart he still wanted to explore and experience the world. He also realized the only way to do so without guilt is to cut off ties to the world. Each tie was a string of karma that bound one to a particular place or location. Even now, he realized the reason he was bound to this place at this time was due to his binding to his father. Had he not pulled on that thread, he would not be in this predicament. Not that he would change his past, what he was gaining here was clearly helping improve him, both physically and mentally.

The only problem was he was once again bound due to strings of fate that he himself wove. Realizing his new way forward time flew, and it was quickly time to begin walking with Qi. This time rather than letting the Qi go directly to his core, he let the Qi first circulate around his core before entering. Each step was a full rotation of Qi.

When it came to jogging, he found the act of circulating Qi much easier, and so had each particle of Qi circle five times before entering his core. By the time he got to push-ups he had each particle circle ten times. He was growing and improving by leaps and bounds. Or at least he felt his speed was impressive. Again, he had no true way of knowing what his rate of improvement was, nor how it could compare to the standard progression that most Titans experienced. All he knew was his own rate of improvement and how much lighter his mind and body both felt from his time being in this chamber.