June 2nd​

I looked over the spreadsheet of students, both here on base and in Rolla, with a sigh. Getting others over the hump to the fourth breakthrough was not as easy as that first session made me think. Four on the first day had turned into only one more over the past week and a half. Seven people had only partially cleared their breakthrough, causing the block to harden like Melissa's had.

One guy had immediately tried again, only to fail once more and according to him the block was nearly solid with his own energy. He'd had high hopes too, since he was one of two that had a chance for a double breakthrough.

After digging into it further with the five that had managed their breakthrough, a pattern was starting to show up. Everyone who'd broken through had been actively doing cycling for multiple hours a day, every day. The lower end of that being three or four hours

Granted, pretty much everyone else had been putting in at least thirty to forty-five minutes a day which sounded like a good amount of time compared to daily physical workouts.

"So how much total time do you think is necessary?" Brent asked, looking at the projected spreadsheet himself. He had called this meeting for a general information sharing session and I'd hoped he had something to share as well.

"Not how much time we're spending on it daily?" Melissa replied from where she was sitting. Her own voice sounded more devil's advocate than anything.

I shook my head. "No, if only for the fact that I don't think anyone could get to where the alien is if it's a daily requirement that gets larger between each breakthrough. Or if you missed a single day, would you have to completely start over?"

"It is possible though." Danny argued. "I mean, the alien's been pretty much non-communicative since he got here and talked at the UN." He took a moment to type on his tablet. "Venus takes two hundred and forty three Earth days to have one day. What if this entire time has basically been a morning for him?"

"Then he's won, because I don't think anyone's going to survive the sleep deprivation needed to push cycling for that long if that's what you need to be at his level." I frowned and everyone nodded slowly. "I went from three to five on my birthday, and went from two to three in mid March. I'd been pushing myself daily to max out my cycling well before we figured out we needed to leave some for techniques. So say around five hours a day at least. Maybe seventy-five hours of cycling?"

"That's within the realm of a long weekend binge if you can do it all close to at once." Melissa noted with a smile. "I've got a little brother who can binge video games longer if you let him."

"Are you wanting to put official recommended numbers up then, Nicole?" Brent asked, looking over the small list again with hesitation in his voice.

I paused, having already been thinking about it. "I was thinking so, yes?"

He shook his head. "Can I convince you to hold off a little bit first? Give me whatever numbers you're thinking of and say… double whatever timeframe you're thinking of. We'll coordinate a specific test through the military to see if we can narrow down those numbers better instead of putting out a guess. With the issue of it splitting from breakthrough three, you're going to want to have safety margins and bigger warnings for people, especially since we're not going to be able to put a 'don't try this at home' warning." He chuckled. "Because everyone who gets this information will explicitly be trying it at home."

I laughed at the joke.

"I'd probably be a good test subject too." Ash brought up, having been quiet so far. He motioned to Karen sitting next to him. "Neither of us really pushed all that hard for four, since it's doubly hard being higher than the planet's breakthrough."

Karen elbowed him. "Speak for yourself. I've been doing two or three hours a night the last month."

"Alright, so I'm the slacker here, apparently." Ash frowned to himself.

I laughed as Karen nodded her agreement. "A hundred hours and two weeks." I answered to Brent. "It feels like I'm rocketing through breakthroughs and there's got to be something more than just enough cycling time to get there. If nothing else, the mental image of yourself is something that helped the others breakthrough as well."

Brent nodded, making some notes. "So I've got four weeks then, and then we can put together something more official to release as a follow-up to your DARPA released paper? I know it's only been a couple of months since the original paper, but we can do a new release up through the fourth breakthrough instead of just having people trawl a wiki for random facts."

"Yeah, sure. Am I being ghostwritten for this one too?"

"If you'd like, or we can just release it with multiple primary sources." Brent offered. "Let me know which, it's not like I have to know today."

"OK. What's next, Brent you have something?" I asked.

"Actually, can I go?" Ash interrupted. "I actually do have an excuse for not pushing my fourth breakthrough and it's likely useful."

I winced at the pointed comment. "Yeah, sorry. Go ahead Ash." I tossed him the projector fob, the distance killing the projection of my spreadsheet.

Ash caught it, but didn't activate his own tablet. "I've been talking to a few people on the forums and stuff. Not many people want to post up how to do their cool shit and a lot of complaints about how what they were able to do before they can barely muster up enough energy to do now. There's actually some bitching your method is actually hamstringing everyone so you can be better."

The room shifted for moment as I dropped my head into my hands. "Wait, first I'm working with the alien, now I'm making it worse for everyone?" I boggled.

"I'll remind you of the hit piece from the media guy for reference on how some people suck." Ash answered. "But there are some people who have posted they've gotten a few things to work again, and a lot of people trying Feathersteps. There's a lot of complaints about not being able to pull it off before second breakthrough, and no one's said they got their own stuff working again until after their second breakthrough either."

"So are we thinking techniques need at least a second breakthrough to have enough power to do anything other than make yourself stronger?" Danny asked, looking thoughtful.

"Probably, but that's not the good part. I managed to find someone reasonably local willing to show off, named Luke. He was even willing to teach me a bit. Bitched when I could hold it longer than him." Ash grinned. "He's a part-time blacksmith outside Springfield who swears by coal."

"So you've been driving off daily to learn blacksmithing?" Karen elbowed him again. "You could have at least brought me along, I could use a change of scenery."

Ash grinned, accepting the blow this time. "You've been dealing with Rolla. But not blacksmithing. He calls it imbuing the fire. He gets his fire going, pushes his energy into the fire, and then converts his energy into that fire. He gets exact precise control of the heat it's putting out."

"Wait, converts it?" Danny nearly demanded, his own energy actually cycling a little, reminding me that Danny seemed to be fire natured like Robert had managed to get his own nature shifted to water from cycling just that.

"Yeah. I know you're fire, but he's neutral. So am I, but watch." Ash pulled out a lighter, flicking it on. An orange yellow flame lit up. "He's got better control than I do, so I wasn't going to show this off yet until I'd gotten it down better, but hey."

I felt Ash start cycling energy and it seemed to collect in his body for a moment, before the overflow spilled fully out of his neck and flowed down his arm to the flame. Just as it hit the flame, it seemed to shift to fiery energy itself.

"It still requires a fuel source, but…" The flame shifted colors, quickly turning white and then pure blue like it was coming from a blowtorch. Ash's energy continued to slowly flow into it. "This'll run out of lighter fluid before I run out of energy, but this is actually hotter than a lighter should actually be able to put out. Honestly, the flame should probably be melting the plastic."

"Is it actually hot then?" Karen had shifted a little away when the lighter came out, but started reaching out for it before quickly pulling her hand back. "Yeah, I can feel plenty of heat."

"Took me two weeks of him explaining and showing it to me before I figured it out. And I mean, like four or five hours a day with him using it off and on for his little business. The only reason he even went that far for me is I commissioned like eight thousand dollars worth of random knives and such from him and stuck around while he was working." Ash shrugged, letting the flame die. "Got a nice little switchblade out of it too. Don't know what I'm going to do with the other couple of random daggers."

I had a headache from staring at the flame, almost a migraine pounding but shook it off and blinked the spots out of my eyes. "That's amazing. Can you do that to any fire?"

Ash sighed, shaking his head. "Oddly, no. It's easiest with his coal fires, not too bad with those propane forges, and pretty crap with my lighter, though less with welder flames. Funny enough, anything further away from what he was showing me it takes more energy to get the fire imbued. Hell, a charcoal fire on a grill is harder than anything Luke had in his shop, which is what really gets me since it's all coal right? Can't figure that one out."

"Have you tried duplicating his setup here?" Brent asked, furiously taking notes. "And I'll get you reimbursed for the training you got him to give you."

Ash gave him a look. "I ain't gonna be some sort of master blacksmith because a guy taught me a neat trick."

"No, but there's a lot of things that use fire that we could use that 'trick' on, especially if it somehow manages to burn differently. If that lighter burns hotter than it should, you might be burning off byproducts or your energy is literally additional, better burning, fuel. Either would be a very interesting offshoot of that."

"Huh. Sure, whatever. Glad to help even if that's what's kept me from pushing for the next breakthrough." Ash looked over at me.

I smiled wanly, still feeling a little off from the bright flame. "I'm not going to complain. Fourth is some sort of big jump, so you want to make sure you're ready."

I could see Melissa looking at me from the corner of my eye. "You ok? You look a little pale."

"Yeah, just all of a sudden a headache. I'll take something after this." I took a deep breath, centering myself. "Any more cool surprises on that, Ash?"

"Wish I did, but nope. All good here now."

"Then I'll go ahead." Brent nodded, getting the projector fob handed off. The projector flickered back on again. "I've got two things I'd like to go over. First being an unmanned hurricane hunter that was sent into the Pacific storm, second are some results I've managed to uncover with getting at the energy in those geodes and hopefully some of the other plants we've had arriving on base. I've got a short video from the UAV first-"

Everything lurched. Something twisted and lifted, and I stood, holding onto the table, feeling myself pale.

"Nicole!? What's wrong?" Danny asked. Did no one else feel it?

Another twist, this time in a direction I couldn't actually point to. A facet of something I couldn't really understand, a flowing something that swung and dove, slipping into places nearby. I could feel my gorge rising as I barely noticed everyone in the room rising in panic, staring at me.

Something unfolded, but it wasn't actually folded up, just out of sight. A bloom of energy building, that actually recognizable but on a scale nearly unimaginable. Fuck.

I nearly lost my lunch as another loop seemed to shudder into place nearby. "What is the strength of the world's soul?" I managed to bite out, keeping lunch down by sheer force of will. Everyone stared at me for a long moment before repeating my words.

It actually took almost thirty seconds before I got an answer, the longest I'd ever waited on Zhaohui's response. Thirty seconds where things just kept building.

Perceptive child.

And then the external energy flowing shifted. Fire and Earth, Air and Water. Now joined by Wood, sliding into place with it. The world itself shifting with the energy, something adding to itself before I started losing track of the impossible direction the shift flowed through.

I then felt a black energy pushing against the risen energy, increasing to match the newer power before fading from my senses.

Everyone else staggered as that happened, no one missing that final shift.

Your world grows quickly to surpass the third block of the [Initiate's Realm] by gorging upon its provided feast.

My wooziness and headache abruptly vanished, the pressure fading even as my grasp on that direction disappeared completely. "Third breakthough."

"Well, that'll make getting my fourth breakthrough easier." Ash noted before continuing. "Wonder what insanity that caused. You OK, Nicole? Did it do something to you?"

I stayed leaning against the table, even if I was feeling better. I looked around the room. "What-" I took a deep breath again, trying to clear my head. "What did you feel?"

Wood energy was the general consensus. I looked at Melissa, the second highest breakthrough in the room. "Nothing else? Just Wood? You didn't feel the breakthrough itself? Something, anything else?"

Melissa shook her head.

"My fear is the new addition is Wood, and we're surrounded by quite the number of woods." Brent said quietly. "Which feeds into what I wanted to show you from the storm, hopefully before anything else happens now. Nicole, are you ok for the next few minutes or do I need to get medical over to here?"

I swallowed, saliva going down easily as my body settled itself. "I'm good. Go ahead." I sat back down.