Eric glared in the direction of the boar that fled before claiming both javelin and fallen tusker, quickly squelching the impulse to give chase as he raced to a still dazed Samuel’s side.

He shook his head as his guts twisted with anxiety. Because unlike himself, a classer with inherent regeneration, sure to recover from any wound, that concussive blast could have done all sorts of awful things to his young, fragile friend. God forbid he was suffering internal bleeding, or a concussion, or worse.

Eric’s lips pressed tightly together. He knew he didn’t dare waste a drop, with less than two full bottles left, and who knew what catastrophe lay just around the corridor. But it all meant nothing if his friend perished thanks to Eric’s own stupidity.

With a quick hard gaze for the treeline a short distance off, and thankfully no sign of further tuskers, Eric quickly summoned one of his remaining healing potions and gave Samuel a sip of the precious liquid.

“Come on, buddy, drink it down, that’s it. Now let’s get back inside.”

Eric couldn’t help but give a great big sigh of relief when Sam’s dazed expression turned to a twisted grimace of disgust and a shudder, clearly not liking the taste of the healing tincture, not that Eric blamed him, it did smell quite fowl. But at least his friend’s glassy-eyed expression had become one of clear-eyed alertness once more.

“Eric, what the fuck just happened?”

Eric winced, gazing apologetically at his friend as they reentered the chamber, wincing at the sight of their formerly clean quarters now absolutely covered in chunks of undead pig.

“I think we just got a lesson in humility. Because your friend’s a cocky idiot who thought he could Bogart month’s worth of disciplined study with more power than is maybe good for him.”

Samuel just shook his head and sighed.

Eric winced, wondering just how angry his young friend was with him. Quite, he’d think, Eric’s stupidity having almost killed them both.

Surprisingly though, Sam just shook his head. “It’s my fault, Eric. I was so caught off guard seeing you infuse the whole chalk diagram, realizing that yes, actually you were a blood mage already, not just a novice with a cool trick or two, and maybe I shouldn’t be surprised with you being one of Morlekai’s companions. But still, it threw me off and I didn’t say anything when I sensed you actually charging up the working, channeling your captured spirit like you were born for this craft and… yeah.” The boy’s eyes grew haunted. “We almost killed ourselves messing with things that I have no business trying to teach another, being little more than an apprentice myself.”

He turned to Eric, bowing his head. “It’s me who owes you an apology, Eric. I… I had no business trying to teach you anything. And my foolishness almost got us killed. Please accept my apologies, and let’s put off any further lessons until we’re at the foot of a master who can teach us both.”

Eric winced, because the last thing he wanted was for his friend to halt his lessons altogether. And he knew he had no one to blame but himself, their near disaster having clearly put the fear of god, or at least an untimely death, into his friend’s formerly enthusiastic devil-may-care attitude.

Eric took a deep breath, and forced himself to nod. “If that’s what you want, Sam, sure. Now how about you get some rest, and I’ll clean this up.”

His friend flashed a shaky smile. “I… yeah, thanks, Eric. I appreciate that. And don’t worry, I won’t waste the time we’re stuck here,” he said, immediately pulling out a book Eric saw was written in Latin. “I’ll do my best to figure out what I did wrong, so even if I don’t dare try to teach you anything else… I can at least make sure anything I summon to protect us is channeled correctly.”

Eric nodded. “Makes sense. Alright, I’ll check on you later.”

Eric then spent the next hour both castigating himself and cleaning the place with remarkable efficiency, needing only a quick touch to send everything from blood to gobbets of flesh right into his vast storage space, having already relegated the recently claimed and still perfectly fresh and edible carcass to the seized storage pouch for rations, such that he’d only keep meat he planned on manipulating into undead bulwarks, defenses, armor, and future attempts at summoning that hopefully wouldn’t end in disaster in his ES Storage space.

Yet as it stood, he couldn’t help feeling a sharp sense of frustration. He was in a cultivation mecca, all but feeling the spiritual energy all around him, only to find that an actual intact cultivation manual complete with meridian channel charts a truly gifted disciple could commune with directly to sense their own meridian flows was beyond his ability to use, since he clearly didn’t have a perfect seven meridian configuration to cycle spiritual energy through, and without being an established cultivator who actually knew what he was doing, he dare not pick any of the precious fruit swaying so temptingly from countless branches, and he couldn’t deny how much he hungered for a piece of juicy peaches tasting of heaven and fiery goodness.

He sighed and shook his head, cleanup finally finished. Because thanks to his own overconfidence, racing ahead at full speed had resulted in a near disaster and gave Sam such a scare that now even lessons at something he was still surprised to find coming so naturally to him were to be put on indefinite hold, and Eric couldn’t help feeling that wondrous opportunities were slipping free of his grasp. Because he was effectively exiling himself for who knew how many weeks, until vindictive goblin assassins, homicidal cannon-using orcs, and a tyrannical mother all lost interest in him and he could safely return Samuel to Freetown without anyone striking at him or the far too fragile youth that would be by his side.

If he was really lucky, he’d manage the feat without any elven lawyers eager to trap Eric into oaths of obligation that basically amounted to System sanctioned enslavement as his mother’s offspring or tool, before he could sneak into the Blue quarter, retrieve his bone bow and other prizes and leave Freetown for good.

He sighed bitterly. Thanks to his mother’s damned shenanigans, Rica’s space had been violated and Eric hadn’t even been able to talk to her directly or reassure her of anything, basically leaving her to fend for herself, despite all the steps he had taken to give her rather luxurious shelter through the storm their lives had become. But he knew that meant nothing if he disappeared without a trace, no doubt seeming like he had abandoned her when he forced himself to look at what he had done through her eyes. One minute he’s there, the next his mother is no doubt hitting her with cold subtle threats, Rica feeling vulnerable as hell with her baby in Elonia’s arms.

It didn’t matter that Elonia would never hurt a child. All that mattered was the awful pressure their mother would make Rica feel, trying to compel Eric to race to her defense, before snapping him up like a wayward game piece she’d never let out of her clutches again.

So Eric had fled, having absolutely no choice at all, abandoning Rica when she had needed him the most.

Eric clenched his fist, squeezing out bitter hot tears of helpless fury. Hating how powerless he had felt and still did, hating how his own promise to protect and defend, his own growing sense of power and competence meant absolutely nothing before the wiles of a player far more powerful and canny than he could have dreamed, still in a state of disbelief to find that his mother was far more than an a callous, domineering parent.

She was the puppet-master behind multiple Contenders, eager to claim this newly subjugated System world for herself, with no qualms at all about using either of her children as pawns upon the board she played upon. And it seemed that according to System logic, Eric was only a free agent for so long as he could keep his own freedom, with awful oaths of enslavement and binding just a single whispered curse or lawyer’s summons away.

Which meant that Eric couldn’t protect anyone, because he couldn’t even protect himself.

He shook his head, cursing bitterly. Now, more than ever, he felt the need to power up and get as strong as he possibly could. Because one truth that now trumped all others more overtly than ever before was that strength was everything, and that only the strongest could ever truly be free. It was a fundamental fact of existence that would never again be hidden, mitigated, or disguised by a fallen world’s rules of etiquette and pretexts of civility.

For Eric, his own path forward was no longer just about the thrill of claiming new territories and powering himself up beyond his wildest dreams. Now he had to do all he could to power up, just to stay free of his mother’s wiles. Just the memory of her hauntingly melodic voice back at Grim’s manor, a voice that had captivated an entire generation of movie-goers now free of all constraints, sent chills down his spine.

How tempted he had been even then to surrender to her will, to embrace the rapture of utter submission, her pawn forevermore.

He shuddered, sickened by the very thought of it now.

Yet he had no doubt that that would be his eventual fate if he didn’t get a hell of a lot stronger, just as quick as he possibly could.

And one thing he didn’t have time to do was waste a month of his life doing absolutely nothing, unable to make use of the one cultivation manual available to him, his one companion now too gun-shy to teach him anything further.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered to himself, giving a frustrated shake of his head before realizing that things weren’t quite as bad as he had feared. Even though his options were more limited than he would have liked, he could still work on the one trash tier cultivation technique he did have access to, and, for all that he couldn’t seem to access the seven meridian gateway depiction within the manual, the tome itself had any number of useful nuggets of advice that he could make use of.

And who knew? Maybe with enough practice, he’d be able to cobble his technique to something decent enough to actually claim some of those Spirit Fruit. He did have an affinity for flame, after all, so hopefully whatever he put together would be enough.

And speaking of flame…

He pulled out one of the Adept quality basic wands he had purchased in the Blue Quarter, flashing a brief bitter smile as he was forced to accept that he had no real idea how to use it. “Because of course the pace of events was such that I had no opportunity for proper lessons… which means if I’m not careful, I’ll be pigeon holed into a fighter-only class even if I manage to saturate my whole damned core. And how convenient would that be for all the powerful players whose spoiled offspring have all the time and opportunity in the world to learn all the exotic arcane techniques out there?”

He smirked and shook his head, at this point no longer even bemused at how all the cards seemed to fall in the favor of unseen players who would no doubt claim the whole damned pot when it was time, the most powerful natives forced to grow and fight in ways that allowed only quick immediate power that would always wane compared to those with the opportunity to follow more specialized paths, such as the arcane arts in all their forms.

For all Eric knew, powerful forces had been mastering the art of claiming worlds for millennia, forever tweaking the game so that seemingly fair ‘rules’ mean absolutely unbeatable advantages for the major Contenders, the natives just an afterthought, eternal grist for their mills.

“But still, there has to be the chance for greatness, even for sorry saps like us humans. However slim, the opportunity to be more than chattel has to be there, even if for no other reason than to stroke the egos of the powerful, so they can feel that the System is fair, and their prosperity the result of their own inherent greatness, not a deck stacked utterly against the natives of any freshly claimed world.” Eric muttered to himself, oddly comforted by the sound of his own voice, if nothing else.

Eric smirked at the wand in his hand. “Shame on me for not taking full advantage of Alice’s talents and learning the ice and lightning wands while I had the chance. But this wand is attuned to fire, and fire is one of my essences, so what the hell is stopping me from figuring this out for myself? Because the Arcanist class had to start from somewhere. God knows no outsider showed us shit, even if the original ‘hosts’ did present the wands to at least a few of us like tools to monkeys, no doubt surprised any of us figured out anything at all.”

Eric took a deep breath, carefully examining the wand in his hand, using his Arcane Perception to feel any flows of magic as best he could.

Only to furrow his brow in frustration, feeling nothing at all.

Oh, he could sense exquisitely made filaments, no doubt used to channel mana into fiery energy, and as restless minutes turned to a trance-like state that lasted several hours, pausing only once in a while to check the ward for fresh spirit beasts lurking nearby, of which there were none, all his focus was on the wand. On the golden filaments twined into various patterns that Eric suspected acted as the framework of a spell. A spell that didn’t need the caster to have mastered whatever basic magical charts a true practitioner needed to know. All that was required was for Eric to figure out how to funnel his own arcane potential into the wand, and from there, channel it through the arcane pattern within. A pair of feats which he had not the foggiest idea how to accomplish.

He frowned, putting away his adept fire wand before pulling out the even more expensive fire wand that had its own power crystal already at full. Forty charges before it needed to be recharged, if he recalled correctly. He gave a satisfied smile, sensing the storm of mana stored in the crystal. With this wand, he wouldn’t even need to funnel the mana from his own Mana Pool into the wand. All he needed to do was channel it through the arcane pattern within.

His hopeful smile soon turned to a hard frown of concentration before he finally shook his head with a frustrated sigh.

In sharp contrast to his almost intuitive sense of necromancy and blood magic, he didn’t have the foggiest idea how to even access, let alone channel, mana of any sort.

The one overpowered and exceedingly dangerous to cast spell that he actually knew was more a hybrid hodgepodge of necromancy and blood magic than anything else, primarily tapping into his stored Potency and Soul Reserves, with just a squirt of mana along for the ride.

A natural elementalist he clearly was not.

At best, he was one of those students who would blossom with a wise tutor to show him the basics, perhaps. But the fact remained that he had no access to anyone practiced in the arcane arts at all.

He sighed, giving a bitter shake of his head as one frustrating hour bled into another.

It appeared that he needed tutors and instructors for pretty much everything he hoped to accomplish, and it was only thanks to literal hundreds of hours of grueling training before the world suffered absolute disaster that allowed him to ascend as far as he had in a purely martial capacity.

He might have talent, but he was no chosen one. Just someone with unusual bloodlines and some very useful knacks with essences and blood magics who had gotten damned lucky.

But still, he couldn’t help glaring at the wand in his hand, knowing that this was the key to opening up so many classes and additional tools for survival. He had in some ways been dealt a very lucky hand. Now it was time for him to make his own luck. And that required, first and foremost, figuring out how to use the arcane weapons at his disposal.

But it was only when he made his way back inside, belly grumbling for lack of sustenance that he was struck with a sudden epiphany, as a backdoor hack to solving an extremely frustrating puzzle unexpectedly fell into place, seeing the outline to a solution he hadn’t even realized was right in front of him.

Literally, he thought, when he pulled out his Blaster Rifle, already knowing what he’d be doing later that day, just as soon as he got some food in his belly.