by Sarah Lin
"Yeah, I... have a lot of training to do." And thinking.
"Don't let me interrupt your training! But if you keep competing in the Junior Showdown, we should definitely hang out more often." With that, Raggest turned to go, his jog becoming a sprint that sent him blurring away down the street. There were no high-speed lanes here, cars and pedestrians simply zipping around one another chaotically.
They couldn't match the chaos of Rick trying to sort through his thoughts. It had grown dark and the night was cool, but his body still burned with residual pain. Worse than that, with unanswered questions.
Chapter 14: Hasty Preparations
Part of Rick was certain that something would go horribly wrong or he would get into trouble and lose his position. Yet H gave no sign of noticing the absence, and in the morning the swelling on his hand had entirely subsided. Rick was used to recovering quickly, but that surprised him.
Still, he decided that it would be best to be direct with his mentor. H might not want to be personal, but Rick thought he would appreciate being bluntly informed. So when he arrived for their afternoon sparring, Rick explained what had happened and showed him the clay vial.
"This... will need to be examined." H took it to his case of tools and sat down, spilling a drop onto a small plate. As he examined it, Rick shifted his weight nearby.
"So you agree it seems suspicious? It would be a hell of a coincidence, but I wasn't sure..."
"Suspicion is reasonable, but in this case inaccurate." After a strange pause, H set down the vial and shook his head. "I would need more time to analyze it fully, but I can tell that it isn't harmful. It's actually an exceptionally good elixir for improving growth."
"That she just handed out because she was impressed?"
"I don't know the old woman's motives. It may be that Raggest was simply lucky."
Rick thought it was more likely that Alger had discovered the opportunity and sent his protege to acquire it, but held his tongue. There was something a bit unusual about the way H was acting. After a pause, H pulled out a cigarette, started to light it with a finger, then thought better of it.
"This way." H headed out to the roof at a rapid pace, so Rick had no choice but to follow.
Once they arrived, however, there seemed to be no cause for haste. His mentor simply lit his cigarette and took several long drags on it, eyes unfocused on the horizon. Rick remained quiet for a while, then began repeating his exercises. Almost as soon as he'd started, H waved a hand back at him.
"This isn't some nonsense test, boy. I'm just thinking." H took a long drag on his cigarette, and when he spoke, the slow words came along with the smoke. "This vial, the encounter... meaningless coincidence. What matters is that Alger is moving more aggressively again. The timing is... not the best. Things are looking ugly in China for several reasons."
"Looking ugly?" Rick asked quietly. He hadn't heard H talk this way before and he didn't like it.
"If it was up to me, this would all be about the events. Just people at the peak of human achievement showing their skills. But there have always been those who like to play games with the competitions. Alger plays to amuse himself and it would be better to ignore him, but sometimes he gets others involved. This time, he's dragged in some of his rivals."
"That's a lot to deduce from one encounter."
"It wasn't just that." H finally turned just slightly to look at him, exhaling a long stream of smoke. "You need to understand, the immortals are a bit of a clique. They pay more attention to one another than to anyone else. The problem is, the money for your training is ultimately coming from one of them, and he's gotten disgruntled. If Alger is being active, maybe there's a good reason for it."
Rick blinked in surprise. "An immortal? I'm sponsored by an immortal?"
"Only indirectly. Authority is delegated to me, and I chose to take a risk on you. But now... he thinks his honor has been besmirched and he demanded that we throw everything we have toward winning."
"Win what?"
"I'm not sure yet. I'm going to need to leave you in order to talk to him." H abruptly took a deep breath and converted his cigarette to ash, which he inhaled. "Here's what I suspect: when the Showdown heads to China, several immortals including your patron will make a bet. That bet will involve you, and much sooner than I'd intended to put you into a serious conflict."
"I understand." Rick didn't feel like he grasped the deeper conflicts, but the end result was comprehensible. "I can keep working on my instincts and footwork alone. Can you leave me some techniques to practice while you're gone?"
"That's one of the things I've been thinking about. It's too early, but I suppose it's time to give you something special. Come on, this is enough sight-seeing."
They headed back in, this time directly to H's room. He waved a hand and some sort of illusory barrier Rick had never noticed before disappeared, revealing a security safe. Bending down beside it, H inserted both a key and a complex weave of aura too quickly for Rick to catch. It opened briefly enough for H to remove something, then he dismissed all of it just as quickly.
"I thought I was jumping the gun getting these yesterday, but now I'm glad I did." H turned back to him, revealing that he held three crystalline spheres. Though they shimmered strangely and seemed to be made of some sort of ethereal material, all Rick could think was that they were exactly the size of the balls he'd been using to juggle. "These are a weapon. A physical focus for the Lucore you'll be developing. It's too early to give them to you, but I'll have to trust you to be responsible, because I might not be around when you need them."
"I can try to make that decision, but I'll need to understand their actual purpose first." Rick started to reach out for the spheres, but H shook his head.
"Not yet. These are the opposite of the training spheres I gave you: instead of disrupting your lucrima soul and distracting you, they'll reinforce your body and hold technique flows for you. It's a similar principle to the sorts of Lucores that are implanted in people, but these start out empty. It will be up to you to fill them."
That explained why Rick didn't feel any lucrim from them, just ether. Except it wasn't quite ether, either, something that was beyond his pay grade. In any case, that was irrelevant to what he needed now. "So I'm not supposed to use these until I can use aura to juggle the training spheres?"
"And not until you can do it well, while fighting. This isn't a joke. These things are powerful, but they're more fragile than they look. If they resonate the wrong way, on accident or not, they'll shatter. And believe me, I do not want to pay for another set of these."
"But you're giving them to me now... because of what you said about filling them?"
"Exactly." H picked up one of the spheres and raised it to eye level, looking through it. "Right now, these are hollow. The next phase of your training was going to be slowly building Lucores to be hosted inside them, but you're going to have to start now."
"Each one of those will hold a technique?" Rick began to get over the strangeness of it and thought back to their original conversation about training. "Let me guess... is one of them going to be a sensory technique? And another one something for ranged attacks?"
H grunted. "You're not stupid when you try. I have an exact technique in mind to improve your sensory abilities, but there's no time to teach it now. The ranged attacks... I haven't figured that out yet. It would have been easier to do the Midas Foundation, but that ship has sailed. Especially with our time limit."
"What about the third sphere?"
"That one is going to reinforce your greatest strength: your defensive core. Like a secondary Lucore, but instead of interfering, the two will support one another. Eventually this one could replace your original defensive core, but there's no time for that either. Anyway, this is the real reason I'm giving you these. If you want to have one ready, you need to start now."
They sat down and H explained how the process was supposed to work. For the first time he handed Rick one of the crystal spheres: it was
slightly cool but generally unremarkable, like it was just a knickknack. Yet the process to use it as a Lucore proved to be surprisingly complex, building on the standard exercises with an entirely new layer of training. Manageable for him, yet it wouldn't have been imaginable several years ago.
"I think I understand the basics." Rick held the sphere carefully, trying to imagine it filling. "Instead of building a Lucore like it's a building, it's like starting with a grain of sand and adding layers of paint until it becomes a sphere."
"That's lazy anthropomorphism, but close enough." H took the sphere back from him and glowered at it, as if he could intimidate the inanimate object. "When the process is finally done, instead of being clear, the sphere will be pure gold. That's one of the reasons this technique is called the Triune Golden Spheres."
"Triune... so the fact that there are three of them isn't just because we need three techniques?"
"No, it's essential to making them work together. When you finally get it, they'll rotate around one another and your aura will just keep them spinning, similar to juggling. Except unlike juggling, you have three and only three. Once you have all three techniques adequately developed, to advance you'll need something more drastic. Perhaps then we'll talk about dissolving some other cores or remaking your foundation."
Rick didn't want to reopen those conversations, but fortunately H was too busy to argue much. Instead he decided to focus on a more immediate question. "I'm not going to be actually juggling these, right? Will I have to be holding them in my pockets or something?"
"If you don't wreck the technique, they'll be inside your soul." H jabbed him in the chest with one finger, then dropped the spheres into his hands. "Think you can handle all this?"
"I understand the technique, but the amount of lucrim that will be required to build a new defensive core layer by layer..."
"I had plans for that too. It may be too early, but you'll just have to tough it out." H walked to the fridge in his room and opened it... to reveal nothing but glass bottles filled with a glowing golden liquid. "This is something you can't talk about, because it's not available to the public. It's a special formulation of elixir and serum called Formula T, and what matters to you is that it's perfectly suited to developing the Triune Golden Spheres."
If it worked similar to philosopher's elixir, Rick was staring at a fortune in lucrim, more than he needed. Yet he had barely begun to formulate questions before H spoke again.
"The problem with this is that it's rough on the body and on the soul. Those supplements I've had you taking? Most of them were just to toughen you enough to take the Formula T. Unfortunately, you're not quite ready. So when you first take it, you'll feel a strange buzz, and there may be a few other side effects. Now, what's absolutely essential is that you always take the exact amount prescribed. Take too much or skip one drink and your progress will suffer for it."
"I... see. Perhaps we'd better go over all the details, then."
H found a sheet and scribbled down a little information, promising to send him a clearer schedule later. It seemed simple enough, just one cup every eight hours, but the fact that this "Formula T" had so many potential risks left Rick nervous. But there was no time to think about that, H was turning to him with a serious expression.
"I need to make arrangements. I won't be available if there's an emergency, so keep to yourself. In two weeks someone - me or somebody else - will come back to get you when the Showdown moves to China. Understand?"
Though Rick wanted to ask about all the other details, H was obviously done talking. "I understand. I'll try to exceed your expectations when we next meet."
"Hmph. You'll have exceeded them if you don't kill yourself somehow." With that, H turned away and began a whirlwind of activity. He didn't seem to need to pack anything, just grabbed a few of his supplies and then dragged the entire invisible safe along with him. Rick stayed out of the way, intending to say farewell, but H stormed out too quickly.
Suddenly he was alone with three crystal spheres, a supply of dangerous elixir, and nothing to do for two weeks but train. Rick found himself smiling.
Chapter 15: Riding the Wave
The first time Rick took the Formula T, he was more than a little anxious. It started with a flow of strength through his system, similar to philosopher's elixir. He quickly sat down and focused on the exercises he'd practiced, drawing the flood of new power into a single point.
But instead of gathering it within himself, which immediately made his aura recoil, he held one of the crystal spheres in his lap. He watched it at first, but found that was only distracting him. Instead he closed his eyes and turned all his new ability to focus toward a single objective. The first step in developing the Triune Golden Spheres was the most difficult, and if he failed, it would set back his development at least a day.
When he thought he was finished, he kept his eyes closed for a while, not wanting to see if his sense for it was right. But he was too restless to sit still, so he opened his eyes and looked down at the sphere.
A spark of gold gleamed in the center of the crystal. Rick breathed a sigh of relief and brought it closer to his face to examine. It felt a bit strange: though it was slightly linked to his lucrima soul, it felt separate, like the few times in his life when he'd had a Lucore extracted. But what mattered was that the heart of it was stable. Now he could layer more and more lucrim onto that spark until the technique was ready.
Curious how it would appear, he opened his portfolio and made sure it had registered the new Lucore. It appeared in a new block in his portfolio:
[Triune Golden Spheres: 250
- Defensive Sphere: 250
- Second Sphere: 0
- Third Sphere: 0]
Apparently the technique was already registered by the app, even down to knowing that the second and third spheres were missing. Rick smiled appreciatively and found himself tossing and catching the sphere before realizing that was reckless. He carefully set it down in the plush case next to the other two.
Maybe it was just the fact that he'd succeeded, but Rick found himself flush with energy. He headed into the main training room and tried to do his footwork, but he was too pumped for it. Instead he ended up shadow-boxing the air, using controlled Bunyan's Steps to flash around the chamber and fight imaginary opponents. Despite having tried to pour all his new strength into the Lucore, he still felt strong, overflowing with lucrim.
Rick ended up leaning against a wall, gasping for breath and laughing for no reason. He realized that he was letting it get ahead of him and summoned all the mental discipline he could to calm down. The rush from the Formula T was clearly a bit too much for him and he understood why it would be unwise for someone to drink it without preparation.
He wanted to try it again to see if he could master the effects, but controlled himself. Now that he had started taking it, he needed to follow the strict regimen of every eight hours or it could damage his growth. So Rick settled down and forced himself to go through all his other training.
As the days passed, Rick threw himself into training like never before. Once he got past the initial rush of Formula T, he found that it left him with a shocking capacity for concentration. When he attempted to rotate the rubber balls with aura while moving, they circled easily. He could juggle the resistance spheres too, their perturbations no longer seeming so disruptive. Doing both at once was still beyond him, but he continued mastering both components.
Every eight hours he got another rush of lucrim and sank all of it into the crystal sphere, eagerly watching the golden speck grow into a small sphere. The visible rate of growth slowed as it grew larger, but he could still see it expanding.
Its growth was almost shocking every time he checked his portfolio. He decided he would have to ask H if the numbers didn't tell the whole story, because some days the listed value of the sphere grew by nearly 1000 lucrim. Or perhaps that was just the result obtained from using top tier skills and supplements.
Ric
k became obsessed with that number, striving to reach 1000 lucrim in growth on a daily basis, then more. He looked back to calculate the average and then his new obsession became getting the overall average above 1000 as well. That proved more difficult, but he threw himself into it relentlessly, eagerly treating each dose of Formula T like it was a battle.
He maintained all his other disciplines, which seemed dull by comparison, but he managed to focus on them anyway due to his formula-induced crystal clear focus. The supplements tasted horrible, but he forced them down because he knew they were keeping the Formula T from overwhelming his system. Even philosopher's elixir was no longer the rush it had once been, but he drank what he had been given so that the growth of his other cores didn't slack. The slow progress was boring compared to the Triune Golden Spheres, but he needed everything he could get.
For days Rick didn't go outside, barely even looked outside. There was nothing but the desperate attempt to increase his average so that he would be ready for the fight. No, the incredible results were worth it for their own sake, because it was a rush like few training sessions before.
One day, he received a text from Melissa. It was followed by a drawing of him with a duck's head, clearly a reference to one of their old jokes. Rick laughed, but then he paused.
As he looked back through his phone, he realized that he hadn't been texting Melissa as regularly as he once had. He'd never ignored her, but he hadn't sent articles or many texts of his own like usual. In part because he hadn't read any articles lately. Rick sat back and slowly came to the realization of just how much he had been neglecting.
The most obvious was that he didn't remember if he'd been eating enough. He'd forced down some tasteless nutrient bars, but it might have been most of a day since the last one. When he looked at his training, he noted that his restless shadow boxing was good for improving his high speed footwork, but he hadn't progressed as much retraining his base instincts.
Was the drawing just another joke, or was it hiding something else? Rick obsessively read back over Melissa's recent texts, feeling a sense of guilt.
