Sachihiro

My search through the orb is exciting but everything I need to learn or create requires time and resources I don’t currently have. Several chakra movement skills could help but chakra is probably the most limited resource I have at the moment and my pools stopped improving after my 2nd tier Awakening. The two people here with me recuperate quickly, it’s interesting to feel the frequency of a person change as their body heals back to full health.

Even the smaller guy with no spiritual presence to help him heals well after his bones are set. I watch them, they can’t see me well in the dark I can tell but I watch them interact as we share the cave amicably.

A disturbance has my attention focused deeper in the cave, ‘’look sharp.’’ The bigger one is up and armed in an instant, good reflexes. Both men feel to be tier 2 awakened but since I can hide my level I don’t take for granted that others can as well.

A boy, a bear-variant beastman boy shambles into my awareness carrying a small person across its shoulders. They stop abruptly some 6 metres from me with the small person being carried blooming to my mana sense as he prepares an attack, ‘’who stands in my path!’’ the voice booms as though from the mouth of an incensed giant nothing at all like the reality I’m seeing.

Hehehe, I can’t but giggle at the ridiculousness of the illusion.

I light the orb holding it up for the gnome to see my face and those around us. ‘’I’ve not known a gnome to have such poor eyesight in darkness this shallow traveller.’’

‘’Oh people! Thank the gods, we’re saved! Do you see that boy, real live people. Excuse our appearance, we’ve been through the pits of the gaol trying to get out these tunnels. You have to help us, we left the others trapped behind.’’

I look at Nathanial and Texas who are giving deference to me to deal with the situation by the looks of it. I take a step back, ‘’unfortunately, I am on an urgent mission but these two strong men have been hoping for companions to help protect each other.’’

I'm not getting involved in any other's problem, not so close to my goals.

I grab the skins tying them around my waist and shoulder, I grab the sharp teeth and strips of meat I’ll smoke into jerky or eat raw depending on circumstance. I look back once, ‘’I’m taking the light.’’ It dims and extinguishes and I’m out of there quickly before anyone can try stop me.

*

The climb up the escarpment isn’t as bad as I had feared though the wall of stone stretches imposingly into the sky.

Wearing skins, having armed myself with pointy canines as daggers my progress is slower than before my injuries, a half jog half limp that covers the distance well enough for me to reach horizon after horizon through the long days and cold nights onwards. Most creatures I sense avoid me, those that don't discouraged with water bolts to the face. I eat cold bloody slabs of my kills as I run, my body complaining under the extreme changes in temperature and continuously forced abuse but somehow not giving up on me.

I lose track of the days I’m on the move but somewhere on the 5th or 6th I come across an oasis of water where once a meteorite must have crushed. The crater is wide, supporting long trees with wide high leaves producing coconut-like fruit reminiscent of hairy eggs that provide the most succulent of sticky nectar. The water flowing from the ground circulates the cracks of the entire large crater in a spiral to pool and slowly drain in the centre in a swirl. The whole phenomenon is pretty odd, it's almost like this place was intentionally designed for something.

I take time here to properly complete my healing, resting to recuperate rebuilding my body with a full stomach and a constant source of clean water. I eat thick slick fish that electrocute me when I attack and the coconuts while using chakra to accelerate healing and re-growth of my skin. I take time to meditate in jinzen communing with my zanpakuto to surprisingly positive results after my most recent experience in shikai.

Something was lacking in the growth of my zanpakuto until now, there is a ‘maturity to it now that wasn’t there before. Within the inner world of my zanpakuto, I meet a version of myself that is the zanpakuto, I meet Shi No Meiyo and we sit and resonate with each other in harmony. There is no word to describe the sense of peace, belonging, certainty and resolve that comes upon me as my soul-weapon resonates with my soul within my soul space.

We don’t fight we don’t communicate with words but from an unspeakable depth, I know that Shi No Meiyo is mine, a part of me that can never be taken away. A part of me growing in deviation from who I perceive myself to be within my body yet the same nontheless. I have the soul of the person I am and the soul of the weapon I am but it is still me, everything I have as a soul-weapon is still mine, I am me but I am more. I have two souls, the realisation is deep.

I resonate with myself in jinzen.

*

Leaving that piece of paradise isn’t easy with how peaceful a nitch it is but I’m back on the road and running like my life depends on it in hardly any time at all. The environment is strangely harsh but doesn’t slow me too badly on my way, I pass by a herd of large bovine creatures as I transition from rock plains into grass plains that remind me very much of home.

The valley has a rich stream with enough small animal life that I don’t struggle to catch myself food, my hair grows long enough to need brushing as I progress. Its days then ten-days in which I obsessively head forward referencing with the orb map I suspect to be wrong following a direction pointed at by my spirit’s connection to another’s. Every day I stop to rest and meditate on my chakra exercises, without an external weapon the internal weapons that work need to be honed to lethal sharpness.

I meditate in jinzen. Getting in touch with myself, with the parts of myself that are the weapon to resonate in silent communication with the growing consciousness Shi no Meiyo. More than anything else I run, with roughly 90 hours of the 100 hours of a day spent running, my body surprising me with its continued resilience throughout the abuse.

Is this what it means to have the body of an awakened king or is this from the benefit of what the Draug forced my body through, cycling energy from Honour through my body? Like a young gazelle sprinting from predators, my pace is respectable leaving in the dust many four-legged creatures that shadow me for a time only to desist when I don’t slack for continuous hours.

A routine forms in which I eat, sleep, meditate in jinzen and practice my release madras before running like a madman for an entire Gaian day at what may have been my full speed not 2 years ago. Whilst running I relax, I let my mind wander, I let my mind worry and do whatever else it needs to solve the many puzzles reading through the orb leaves me with solving. I daydream of a family reunion in which I find everyone strong and healthy and happy to see me.

The terrain changes again to sparse woodlands with the trees trying to grab me with their supple branches too tough for me to break through without some innovative wiggling. I discover trees have intrinsic chakra defences, unlike most sapient creatures that have attacked me so far. I discover I can’t deliver chakra attacks directly within certain trees as they have a spiritual aspect I can’t bypass.

A clap of thunder in an otherwise sparsely clouded day has me stopping in my tracks to take account of my surroundings. In the distance sounds of struggle become distinct as I focus, it's in my path so carefully I head towards it.

It's several more kilometres before I can witness the fight taking place in my path. A clearing having formed in the epicentre of the two creatures’ clash, an epicentre of blasted ground bare of life. Their mana abilities creating a residual scent in the air of mana blasts but most of the damage to each other from horn, claw and teeth.

I stay to watch the clash. The two monster creatures rearranging the landscape with their bloody struggle, their large bodies much too fast for creatures bigger than a regular house. Their mana abilities much too precise for creatures not led by a higher intelligence, the attacks too calculated. It’s a beautiful fight to witness, bloody and raw yet there is a discipline in it. Strategy. Art.

I stay over an hour watching before going around the two creatures goring each other to death. Entertaining but I can’t let myself be distracted for long, there is so much on the line for me.

It’s another two days before I come across a road, a human paved road designed for carts and carriages. I have nothing on me but I need supplies, I need a proper weapon. I find a stream in the forest and follow it to a pond where I follow the fresh scat of animals large enough to be valuable. Tracking using mana signature when the hoofs disappear as the animal used a mana ability.

It’s not long before I find a solitary family of cervidae grazing among the trees, the male occasionally sending out a subtle pulse of mana checking for predators but with animal cloaking learnt from Elentril my mana is dampened. I can’t hunt a mana based creature using water bolts, it will sense that much mana being congealed and bolt. I can’t chase it, it’s weaker than me I feel having only awakened once but it could still be faster than me. With beasts one never knows what speciality they have unless you’ve hunted the same prey often enough.

How should I do this?

I go around them on the side the wind isn’t blowing, carving a simple trap rune between two trees in the path the beasts are likely to take. I slowly arm the runes with mana as subtle as possible, they don’t notice me with several smaller mana signatures around to mask my own. I carve a few more runes in case they scatter or take an alternative path before going back behind them and getting ready for my ambush. Here goes.

Quickly mana congeals within me the lead cervidae’s head coming up in alarm.

KGGGGGG, it cries out and shields form around each beast as they run straight towards my traps. I’m not far behind sprinting after them whilst congealing a dense water spear like a javelin of water behind me.

TLA, one gets caught in the trap halting in its moment breaking the ward in the process. That’s all the opening I need, I throw the water spear with a grunt of force.

HLAA, the spear breaks through the shielding downing the deer-like beast on its chest before it's up a moment later. I’m already there though peppering it with quick water bolts to the head that stagger it into a tree.

The lead cervidae unleashes psionic energy that staggers me in my stride, dizzily I roll with the punch falling and getting up to deliver water bolts at the lead cervidae standing protectively over my struggling prey. Its shield holds but it doesn’t get another chance at me before I’m upon it and it decides to run instead of fight, smart.

I’m upon my dizzy prey with a swipe of a sharp canine to the throat, it bleeds but doesn’t die quickly. Struggling to breathe blowing foaming blood through its open throat and mouth. Fuck.

Breathing and moving just so I pull from my pools cladding myself in a sheet of chakra I pour spirit energy into as it shapes, focusing on the chakra points on my fingers I deliver a stabbing strike to the heart. The execution is perfect; exactly as the book outlines, exactly as I’ve been practising. The creature pulses slightly but no internal damage manifests, barely any external damage for that matter.

It dies slowly with panicked eyes like black marbles staring up at me, don’t look at me like that beautiful creature, your death will be of use. I crouch caressing its soft fur, it is the natural order of things to die for others but this lady deserved a clean death. I feel someone silently enter my awareness, he draws and aims from cover then two others swagger through the bushes one with fingertips sizzling with blue lightning.

‘’We’ll just take that off your hands,’’ the oldest of the group says picking his teeth with a piece of straw. They are a rough sort, hunters by their equipment and movement but definitely not warriors.

‘’If you leave now I won’t maim you,’’ I decide.

‘’Maim us? Quaid, teach this savage some manners.’’

I cast a water shield disconnecting it to sizzle and steam with blue lightning as I run around eating the distance to new prey. I duck under an arrow that screams overhead to shatter against a tree somewhere behind me as I cast and discard a second shield to steam with lightning.

Sensing no spiritual energy or chakra from the caster I duck under a panicked cast delivering a spirit-aura honed chakra release stabbing with my fingers at its liver.

UGGGGHH, he projectile pukes red from the internal trauma.

I sweep him off his feet slapping away a clumsy stab from a wild-eyed panicked foe to deliver a finger stab to the chest deflating his lung.

Moving to keep the archer from getting a good shot I cast one, two, three water bolts in succession that all impact the archers torso knocking him on his ass with bruised ribs. I check my surroundings, no threats left standing with the archer the most likely to get up first by the looks of things.

‘’You shouldn’t rob people in the woods,’’ I take their equipment.

Using my newly claimed knife I cut off the left thumb from each one of the robbers and leave them to try and crawl away as I heft my kill on my shoulders and head towards the road.

Surprisingly I feel much better about the cervidae’s painful death now. I can get supplies, some clean clothes and find out where I am exactly, things are looking up.