Chapter Thirty-Nine

Elysia glanced at her max charge to find it dropped all the way to 9030. As an experiment, she released a single strand lightning bolt, nearly ripping her arm out of its socket as it discharged into the ceiling. Without looking at the result of the explosion, she heard she checked her charge again. It dropped to 7530, causing a frown.

Not only did she lose max charge, but the cost went up. Was the boost in power and control worth it? The lightning bolt felt a ton stronger, maybe even double, but it was hard to tell. It didn’t help she barely used the previous lightning, so there wasn’t much a baseline.

One thing she knew for sure was it was many times stronger than the lightning before she merged the divine lightning. Probably too strong, if she were to be honest. She doubted anything near her level could withstand even the previous lightning bolt, let alone this one.

Done with her internal investigation, she returned her attention to the outside world only to find the lightning elemental on his knees, eyes dilated with fear. That was when she noticed her passive aura ratcheted up several notches to the point she doubted she could go out in public.

There had to be a way to tone it down. The leaders of this town didn’t give off an oppressive feeling either, but that might be because her lightning was so potent. Wherever they went, everyone seemed to worship them, so maybe her passive aura was there to stay.

Still, she wouldn’t give up without trying to fix it. Her elemental side demanded respect, but life would be annoying and inconvenient if everyone’s brains turned to mush just being in her presence.

She ignored the elemental as she returned her attention inward, trying to find the source of the passive aura. Unlike before, when she tried to pull the aura in, she wanted to see if she could stop it at the source.

Several seconds passed as she watched her essence cycle through her body, providing the needed support. She delved deeper to find whatever excess essence not absorbed by her body escaped through her pores.

How did she control something that was involuntary, like a heartbeat or, in her case, a core pulse? Was there a way to reset her body or calibrate it to use only what it needed? What if she forced it to use the excess essence?

The temptation of asking her sister appeared, but upon sending images, she received no response. Next, she turned her attention to the lightning elemental, but he disappeared. Ione and she were alone in the training room.

Since he disappeared so quick without a trace, the space elemental must have teleported him away, which meant he probably knew what she wanted to do but didn’t bother to help.

With no one to ask, Elysia just shrugged her shoulders, then tried her hunch. While she couldn’t control how much essence her core pulses sent through her body, she could latch onto the essence before it expelled from her body.

She tried just that. Instead of letting that excess essence leave her body, she latched onto it, straining her control, but unlike when it was in strand form, there wasn’t much resistance. The problem was spreading her control around her entire body.

With a shove, she sent the essence back, gritting her teeth as her body burned. Her muscles locked up, but she endured not letting any of the essence escape. Strangely, while she held essence in, her core stopped pulsing as if it knew her body didn’t need any more essence.

As the essence sunk back into her body, it became easier to hold back what remained, allowing her to peek outside to find at least part of her plan worked out. No essence escaped her body and as such no aura permeated the air surrounding her. It did nothing to dim her shining body, though.

When the essence ran out, she almost released her control until another core pulse sent a fresh wave of essence throughout her body. She held her blockade firm, succeeding once more at the cost of a headache.

No stranger to headaches. She pushed through it as the cycle repeated itself. Fortunately, by the third cycle, something changed. Her core pulsed and sent its payload of essence through her body, but as if calibrated, no essence hammered into her barrier.

Realization dawned at that moment. Her aura issues were because her core needed to adjust to her increased power. It probably released a set ratio of her essence, but because of her power ups, it sent too much for her body to absorb. That meant she needed to calibrate it every time she consolidated her lightning.

If only someone told her the solution sooner. She was sure they knew what was going on. Well, maybe not the lower level elementals who crumbled in her presence. They probably assumed she was releasing her aura on purpose.

Now if only she could do something about her blinding lightning bug impression. She wasn’t sure how she could solve that one, though. It would be stupid to limit the essence nourishing her body, which was probably the only way she could dim herself.

She wasn’t going to hurt her body just to appear stealthier. She could always wear some full-body cloak or something. If the lightning bug effect was the only downside to being a divine elemental, she couldn’t complain.

To be sure she succeeded in her calibration, she released her control, then watched several core pulses to see if any essence leaked out. Her core pulsed much slower than before, but it didn’t seem to have a negative effect. The essence released each pulse seemed perfectly tuned to what her body needed.

Satisfied, Elysia returned her attention to the project that caused her latest consolidation. Like the lightning elemental told her, she released a lightning strand worth of essence burst, filling her veins to their limit. Unfortunately, like her previous attempt, the essence bloated her veins for several seconds before returning to her core without inducing the desired lightning form.

That probably meant she needed to consolidate her lightning even further. What if her lightning never reached the point of inducing a lightning form? There had to be a limit to how much she could consolidate her lightning. Well, maybe not. As long as she continued to level, she could probably force her lightning to ever stronger levels.

At least until she was some lightning goddess, if that was even possible. She had divinity, but it couldn’t be so simple to turn into a goddess.

Elysia scanned the empty training room. Now what should she do? She could play with the other training devices, but she wasn’t sure what they did and what if she destroyed them? Her lightning had to be at absurd levels of power after her latest consolidation.

She stood, but before she could investigate the devices along the right wall, she received a series of images from her twin asking her to put Umbra into some rebuild mode, otherwise Umbra may reject any improvements.

Why did Umbra allow China Creek to fix her then? Maybe it worked because she was nearby. Did she want to give them full access to rebuild Umbra, though? She didn’t trust them. They could add something that could harm her or her crew. There could be a way to safeguard against hostile action. The system gave her an unnatural level of control over Umbra, so it was possible.

A prod of her bond with Umbra caused her to worry she was too far away at over five kilometers. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case as when she delved into the bond, the menu came up, though it took a little longer. It wasn’t instant like it was when she was in Umbra.

After scanning through the options, she found the rebuild mode at the bottom. Upon refocusing on the option, it opened up a list, allowing her to limit which sections of Umbra could be worked on.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t limit the workers to a few sections, as Umbra needed a full rebuild. She selected the full rebuild option, opening up a much shorter list.

A smile sprouted as she saw she did in fact have several options to protect both her crew and Umbra herself. By default, a mild restriction appeared selected, which stopped the installation of defective parts, but nothing about more malicious threats.

Fortunately, there were plenty of other levels of security, the most extreme being the manual approval option. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go that far as that would mean she would have to sit around and accept every changed to Umbra even to the point of paint color.

Though she saw the use of the option. It might actually be a good idea to use it, since she wasn’t sure what Sereia and Eva cooked up. Some shenanigans from those two wasn’t what she feared though. They may create inconveniences, but she trusted them enough to not bring harm to Umbra.

That left the medium and heavy restriction options. The medium restriction built on the mild restriction, adding a block on sabotage to core systems such as power, propulsion, and hull integrity. She wasn’t sure why anyone would choose anything weaker than medium restriction.

Actually, she could see a reason. She would never risk Umbra to that degree, but it was possible some may intentionally sabotage their own vessel to scuttle, or maybe under threat.

The last option was the one she needed. It protected Umbra and her crew from pretty much any malicious or unintentional sabotage. The option went beyond protecting Umbra. No devices that could harm or spy on the crew could be installed. She wasn’t sure how the system pull that off. There had to be loopholes that at least it would protect them from most threats.

Elysia selected the option, then closed the menu and returned her attention to the training room.

Out of curiosity, she approached the cube and rested her hand on the cold metal top. Instead of using a full lightning thread as she doubted that would end well, she tried to do something that wasn’t possible before.

She grabbed control of a lightning strand within her core, then siphoned off a small section of it, which automatically formed another much smaller thread. The donor thread somehow remained exactly the same size as before, but she put that out of mind as she controlled the tiny thread.

Elysia barely felt the resistance of the thread that was maybe a tenth of the size of a full size thread as she pushed it through her veins. It was definitely much stronger than the weakest chopped up thread she tried before, but with her improved control, it was effortless.

As soon as it entered the maze, the cube lit up and warmed to the touch. It wasn’t to an uncomfortable level but enough that she wanted to complete the maze as quick as possible before she damaged it.

Any worry turned out to be pointless as the lightning strand shot through the maze so fast she doubted a pre-system human could follow it. In a few blinks she reached the end, then let her lightning dissipated.

She stepped back from the cube, figuring she outgrew the training device. Any stronger lightning bolt could damage the cube, anyway. Her eyes landed on another cube, which was at least double the size, but she shook her head. She doubted it would prove a challenge.

Unfortunately, the only other devices appeared to train the strength or her ability to jump her lightning to ever distant objects. Based on her previous experiences, neither of those training methods would do her any good. Even before her jump in control and power, she didn’t lack the ability to chain her lightning between metallic objects.

At least that was her thought until she approached one of the last training devices. It consisted of dozens of orbs on pedestals, but unlike the other training devices, the orbs weren’t made of metal.

Could she learn how to use chain lightning without the skill? That would be awesome if she could. It was at least worth a try.