Chapter 2

Jack arrived home just as the dark was setting in, he felt exhausted, he walked into his small apartment, took off his coat and slouched into his old sofa in front of the television. He didn’t turn it on, he just stared at it. As much as wanted to just switch off and delve into a nice long session of gaming all night, he just couldn’t.

Instead he went to a cupboard and took out a plastic tray filled with an array of what looked to be gadgets. All kinds of small devices from the simple to the complicated, he had light bulbs, old mobile phones, gameboys, random wiring, TV remote controllers, all kinds of different batteries to name just a few. This tray had at first been a source of great hope for Jack, and then a source of great frustration until he just couldn’t look at it anymore and simply kept it in a cupboard.

Jack sat back down and picked up an old flip screen mobile phone, it looked to be close to twenty years old but still had a little charge left. He closed his eyes and concentrated on feeling the phone in his hand, trying to extend his senses to the charge he felt inside it, trying to draw out that charge and direct it towards him. It felt like he was pulling something, he opened his eyes and saw the screen flicker but then a painful shock travelled up his arm and seemed to go directly to his heart.

“FUCK!” Jack dropped the phone and stood up, coughing and beating his chest until the pain subsided taking deep breaths. It was always the same, no matter what he tried he couldn’t get it to work. He sighed and put away the tray of disappointment and sat down with his laptop. He booted it up and entered the web browser typing in the usual search “Lightning cultivation”. As usual the browser came up with a myriad of results but all of the top results were either useless to him or he’d already seen them and knew they were bogus.

Looking at the search results demonstrated how much the world had changed in two years, no one knew where it all began since multiple reports of strange goings on had started all over. At first people thought it was all a hoax but then the evidence became undeniable especially since literally everyone experienced the strangeness for themselves. Magic, monsters, dungeons, strange weather and more, things were only getting more chaotic in the world as things progressed, there were people out there moving the ground with their minds, or sending out blasts of fire with their hands! All of a sudden the world began changing and it seemed the human population had gained access to this incredible power, no one knew what the cause of it was, every scientist the world over was baffled. There were all sorts of theories as to the cause from the scientific to the religious but in the end no one could prove anything. So people adapted.

It was discovered that people all had affinities for certain types of magic as it simply came to be known. Scientists and government officials tried calling it different names at first but when one government spokesperson accidentally used the M word it just stuck. Elemental affinities; fire, water, earth, wind and yep lightning, the forces of nature considered by our ancestors as elements could be wielded by anyone with the affinity and everyone had one.

When this was eventually realised there was a mixture of excitement and panic, some thought it was the end times, some feared the upheaval of society and civilisation, some were excited for the possibilities and some were excited to blow shit up. In many places throughout the world where people were already unhappy and crime was rampant, violent change and societal upheaval were common but in other places various governments managed to get a handle on things and adapt with the changing world.

Naturally you’d think the ready access to raw elemental power for any average citizen would lead to societal upheaval but since everyone pretty much had access to the same power the status quo often remained instead. In fact as is so often the case the rich just seemed to get richer, as is the way.

It wasn’t automatic power though, thought Jack ruefully, if you wanted power you had to work for it. In order to get stronger individuals had to “cultivate” as the practice had become known, they had to practice drawing in the nearby essence of their affinity and store it within themselves as a “core”, thereby getting stronger with greater command over their element. It had only been several months since the practice had become common, there were no standardised techniques or accepted terms used, it was only known that the general practice worked and people were pretty much winging it, developing their own styles and sharing what they discovered online, expanding their knowledge. Therein lay a big problem for Jack and others like him, barely anyone was a lightning cultivator, according to a recent emergency census where the government had managed to come up with a method to test a person’s affinity, the spread of fire, earth, water and wind elements were pretty even at around a quarter each for the entire population of the UK. It was found to be the same in most other countries that had performed the census, but for lighting elements, it was generally less than 1 percent of the population.

This was a major disadvantage for Jack and other lightning elements, it basically cut down their talent pool to a fraction of what the other elements were working with, fewer people means fewer success stories meaning fewer people sharing their findings. Not only that but cultivating lighting was widely believed these days to be basically impossible, whereas other elements had their quirks and dangers lightning was fast, violent and powerful, even a small electrical charge disrupted whatever focus the cultivator had and led to an aborted attempt, if they were lucky.

Cultivation came with big risks if you pushed it too far. Fire elements obviously were at risk of burning themselves, ranging from a light scald to full on 4th degree burns. Water elements risked massive internal fluid build up which could manifest in isolated pockets around their bodies known as an oedema or dilute their bloodstream so much they bled to death at the slightest cut, some had even accidentally drowned themselves. Wind elements garnered greater risk due to pockets of air forming in their blood vessels causing gas embolisms which give them heart attacks or strokes. The greatest horror stories however were reserved for earth elemental cultivators; petrification, there were countless pictures dotting the web of individuals who had parts of their anatomies turned grey, rough, stony and immobile. Sometimes it led to death, sometimes these people lived to become graphic reminders of the dangers of cultivation. Lightning though, nothing solid was really known about the risks of doing so, there were a few scattered rumours here and there but nothing much since no one had managed to even get to that threshold of danger.

Jack looked idly through the various search results, there was nothing on lightning cultivation predictably but he thought by examining the techniques others used he could adapt something similar for himself. He saw videos of fire elements cultivating next to bonfires and barbecues, water elements next to flowing rivers or sprinkler systems but nothing really applicable to him. He’d tried every technique described, it was eventually found that drawing an elemental essence directly into your core located next the heart was a quicker way of cultivation but also far riskier, it was found to be much safer and thus advised by most governments if you drew the elemental essence through your body's extremities first, allowing it to diffuse and then gather it to your core, thus most people cultivated with their arms outstretched towards an elemental essence. Though there were some people who prefered to cultivate through their feet.

As he expected Jack came up with diddly squat, there were no effective techniques, no elemental essence he could draw on and no success stories he could learn from. It wasn’t like he was a power hungry maniac who wanted to go around shooting stuff with bolts of lightning or whatever but still, cultivation did offer massive benefits besides, ya know, shooting stuff. Just a little time spent on it like most average people could lead to visible health benefits, doctors were actually starting to publicly recommend it despite the risks, sort of like eating fruit and vegetables everyday but don’t gorge yourself, or getting regular exercise but always warmup and stretch first. But when someone seriously committed to cultivating their element, that was when you really saw some effects, beyond the manipulation of one’s element there were benefits such as increased physical strength, greater vitality and durability and very rarely getting sick if ever. It was even rumoured longevity was a part of the package but it was too soon to tell just yet.

The ones who committed to the practice of cultivation quite often found themselves gravitating towards the work of hunting monsters, which had gradually started appearing more and more, a role that had garnered a rather large amount of prestige in just a few short months. It was well known this work had excited the minds of many a young and not so young individual but the work itself was no fantasy, it was extraordinarily dangerous where even the simplest of jobs could turn into a nightmare and any hunter risked a previously unimaginable gruesome fate. The payoffs though were arguably extremely worth it, just hunting a monster as a means of pest control could pay a large sum depending on who was paying, many monsters also were known to be sources of previously unattainable materials. These materials had uses in many industries ranging from medicine to weaponry, from textiles to food production, construction to cosmetics and they were still finding more materials and more uses. The scarcity and difficulty in acquisition however meant that the prices a hunter could demand for their harvested loot remained high, even for something common like the venom sack of a giant wasp.

Jack sighed, he wasn’t getting anywhere and it was getting late, he heated up some rice leftover from last night’s takeaway and sat down to watch tv. He flicked through the channels, the usual sort of stuff was on; some giant horned monster got taken down in Surrey and the hunter team responsible were getting interviewed next to the corpse, a new dungeon had been discovered in Manchester city centre and police were cordoning it off and some gorgeous celebrity hunter/model/singer/actress was walking down a red carpet in the U.S. Jack settled for a talk show hosted by comedians.

Soon Jack finished eating, he picked up the venom sack from the wasp he’d been given and looked at it, wondering, he put it in the fridge and decided to call it a day. He went to bed and soon after fell asleep.